Opposing Forces
by a mountain of gideon's scones
Summary: Myrnin's made a mistake. He's made one that could end Claire Danvers' life, but will he fight for her? Hell yes, he will. Because the price to pay for lust is nought compared to never loving at all. /ClaireMyrnin, in a sense.
1. Visits

an: this is my first attempt at a ClaireMyrnin multichapter in a _long_ time; I've still got another two up and being written, but this idea hit me earlier, and so I had to write it! I'm not sure where it will go _exactly_, but I hope you enjoy it.

Also, the entire fic is for **Blue** (BlueEyes444) so I hope you like it!

I don't own anything

It's sort of set after Kiss of Death, but it isn't compliant with Ghost Town, I don't think.

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The first thing Claire saw when she woke up was Myrnin's face looming above her. It wasn't the face that bothered her, no, she found it strangely attractive (no matter what she told her boyfriend) but it was more the expression on it…_and the fact that he was in her room!_

Needless to say, Claire did what any self-respecting girl in Morganville who had vampires able to get into her house would have done; she screamed at the same time as rolling over in her bed to reach the emergency stake on the top of her drawers.

"_Relax_, child; I have no desire to hurt you." Myrnin sounded amused as he moved away from being as close to Claire as before, yet the expression on his face was slightly more hurt than amused. "Why would I hurt my assistant? It would make no sense…I would have to spend all the time I've spent training _you_ with someone else, and with my experiments, I require you." He smiled across at her as he spoke, yet there was the touch of manic-ness about it that had Claire slightly worried.

Scratch that, it had her wondering whether or not she should be getting the hell out of the room and down to the spare blood in the fridge, because Myrnin looked hungry rather than anything else. In fact, she thought that he was more bothered about having some fresh blood than _science_, which was unusual, because everything took second place to science and alchemy – even feeding, because of why he had become a vampire. But Myrnin's back story wasn't particularly her interest at that current time; she was more concerned with getting him _out_ of her room without him killing her…and, secondly though it probably was almost as important, she had to get him out without Shane knowing he had been in there. She could tell that he was even less fond of Myrnin than he had been before the impromptu trip to Blacke they had taken, even though Myrnin hadn't even _been _there, and she did try her best to keep the two parts of her life as separate as possible; there was no point antagonising one man, especially when she cared for them both.

"Would you like to explain _why_ you're in my room, or is it just that you got lost trying to get to the strip club across town?" she snapped, rolling back across in bed as she made sure that the quilt covered everything it needed to. She was pretty sure that he loved Ada's memory still – well, she hadn't exactly planned for a heart-to-heart with him about his love life – but she wasn't sure, and if she was listening to Shane right, he loved her…so there was no point in giving him a chance to see something he shouldn't be seeing, was there?

His facial expressions almost lost the hungry aspect to them; instead, it was replaced by shock. "You mean to tell me that there is a _strip club_ in Morganville?" he asked, intrigued. "Why did nobody tell me about this jewel of information? I would have ensured-" he made to continue, but Claire cut him off, not particularly keen on hearing about what he would have probably done.

"Shut up about strip clubs and tell me _why_ you're in my room, or I'll throw this stake at you." She aimed the stake in his general direction, the shock from waking up not quite counterbalancing the sleepiness – she didn't know what time it was, but she guessed the early hours wouldn't be a bad approximation – and guessed that the threat would, hopefully, be enough.

It wasn't. Of course, Myrnin wouldn't fall for what Oliver had, down in that little town. "_Claire_, you realise that I could merely dodge your stake and then drag you with me to my laboratory, if you are unwilling to come with me?"

She merely stared at him, trying to make her point. Unfortunately, it didn't work with Myrnin; he didn't get that staring at someone basically meant that one understood that they were a complete idiot. "If you had _said_ that you wanted me to your lab, I'd have said, 'oh yes, Myrnin, if you leave however you got here, I will be there when I'm dressed,' but you didn't tell me you wanted me to go to your hideaway lair!" she rolled her eyes, wondering what the time was. It was still dark outside, so that basically meant it was any time before about six in the morning.

Eve was probably still _up_, not having gone to bed, since she preferred the early hours; Michael would be with her. Shane could be anywhere, given that he hadn't come running to see if she was ok when she screamed, as he would have if he had been in the house. He was probably hunting rogue vampires, she thought with irritation, something he found he was able to do easier since they had returned from Blacke and he had managed to nick some of Oliver's weapons.

Myrnin merely blinked at Claire, any emotion leaving his face to leave him more emotionally blank, besides for the desire for her blood that hung around on his face; it was desire of some sort – what, Claire couldn't tell – but given the fact that he drank so much, she linked it to the human life source. "Very well, Claire, I want you to come to my laboratory _now_, or whenever you are dressed. I shall expect you through in five minutes, no more. Do you understand?"

She nodded, not bothering to speak because it would mean that he would leave sooner and then she could go back to sleep and "pretend" that she forgot that she was meant to be going to him. Unfortunately, he levelled her with that glance that made her _sure_ he knew what her plans were, and she got the shiver down her spine that gave her the feeling that he would be back in five minutes – and he would use brute force, if he had to.

As soon as the portal was shut, a disapproving Myrnin stepping through it, Claire turned to look at the clock.

And she was instantly irritated and depressed... at the same time, naturally.

"Why the hell do I have the _only_ boss in Morganville who makes his employee go to work at three forty five in the _morning_?" she moaned to herself, swinging her legs out of the bed to dress. Five hours sleep wasn't enough for even her to be on top form; she was sure that cutting corners on experiments and reminding Myrnin every second of the working day _why_ she was so mad, would be in order. That was the only way that she would be able to make it through, she thought – that, and an extra large coffee and muffin from Common Grounds, specially ordered.

Part of her wanted to ring it in now, just to irritate Oliver some more, after they were all forced to take that road trip together. Then again, she thought, perhaps angering the second most powerful vampire in Morganville wouldn't do her any favours, the next time she came up to the council and decided to try and argue for something Shane did to be ignored. Or, more importantly, if he banned her from Common Grounds; then there _would_ be no purpose in her life when she had to do all these early morning starts. Since she had been introduced to them, chocolate mochas were Claire's life, and she wasn't going to give them up to just play a prank on Oliver.

No, she would get ready and head to work, and demand that she was paid overtime for the appalling times she was being forced to start work at. Though she knew, in her head, that Myrnin would claim that they were keeping a British clock and that she was already late by their times.

She could never win.

**~x~**

She made her way into the lab only four minutes later – early, though it wouldn't be early enough for Myrnin, probably – and she found him staring at the wall in the far corner, something that wasn't normal behaviour, even for him. The entire time she'd known him, even when he was fighting his inner demons with the disease, he had managed to keep enough sanity to at least look the person he employed in the face. The wall wasn't interesting – as far as she could see, it was the same ugly green colour it had been the last time she was in here – so she couldn't see the massive allure from it, and that was worrying. Maybe his insanity had returned, but there was no disease so she'd just be waiting till he turned back into a regular vampire and hoping he didn't kill her in the process.

"Uh, Myrnin?" she stepped forwards, clutching her cardigan around her to try and regain her body warmth. Her bed had been warm; so had the Glass House hallway, where she'd left a note saying she'd gone to work, but Myrnin's lab was freezing, as though they were in the middle of winter rather than the balmy spring that was currently in season. "Are you alright?" she wondered if touching him was the best idea, since he seemed completely out of it and she knew better than to interrupt an occupied vampire, but she finally decided to do it. He had invited her here to work – forced her, really – and there he was, just standing there, completely unresponsive.

She approached his body with caution, keeping her mind cautious as to how she could possibly throw him off, if he tried to attack her. Biting tended to do the trick; it just left one hell of a pissed vampire…but that wasn't the issue.

The issue was what happened when she put her hand on his shoulder.

He whirled around, his eyes wild and unseeing, looking for who dared to touch _him_, and there was a wildness that scared Claire. But, more than that, there was a sense that she could actually understand the hunger in his eyes. It wasn't hunger for blood – though that probably _was_ part of it; it was Myrnin, after all – but a desire for someone, and she had a feeling that that person was Ada. _If I have to run a counselling session for him at four in the morning, I will _not_ be happy_, she grumbled in her mind, yet continued to get closer to Myrnin, despite the look on his face.

"Myrnin…you told me to come, remember?" she reminded him gently, her voice soft and soothing. "I'm working with you…you know that, right?"

He didn't say a word to her in response; it was more of an action that was so sudden and unexpected, that she couldn't fight it off – and part of her didn't _want_ to.

His lips pressed to hers.

There was something in the air that sparked between them, something that occurred as he forced himself on her, his eyes bright and shining brighter than she had ever seen them before; there was something feral in them, something in his expression that told her that he believed in what he was doing one hundred percent – and once she had realised this, it was far too late for her to cut him off. She couldn't even bite him, for God's sake, because her mouth was on his, and he was kissing her…and, _fuck_, how had it taken her an entire two and a half minutes to remember about Shane? She was dating someone! And Myrnin was kissing her! Was he on _drugs_ or something? Or had he drugged her, to be able to kiss her without her remembering about Shane, because there was something in this kiss that made him tempting to her?

Finally, she fought him off, twisting and turning to wrench herself out of his grasp. "Are you _crazy_?" she snapped at him, wiping him from her lips, though the memory was still there, with the way they were slightly swollen and tingled. "Myrnin, I'm _dating_ someone…I only work for you!"

His face creased into a frown, and it was as though a mask was lifted from his face; he seemed confused and disorientated, unable to understand where he was and what he was doing. "Wait…you're not Ada…" he said, and she was unable to contain herself when she next spoke.

"No _shit_, Sherlock," she snapped, sounding completely unlike herself, but she felt that she had the right, since he had _kissed_ her. "I think I'd know if I was a projection of myself and that my head was in a _machine_."

"Brain," he corrected her automatically, yet there was no small smile or twinkle in his eyes, as there always was. "And…it was only ever Ada who approached me when I was…_occupied_."

"So that made you think that your girlfriend was back from the dead, and so you had to snog her senseless," Claire replied deadpan, her eyes flashing with anger. "You're deranged, Myrnin, seriously."

And then she did the most idiotic thing she had done that night – or morning. She turned her back on a confused vampire, one who continued to thirst for blood, and especially for _her_ blood, now that she was the last woman he could taste on his lips. She was divine, something that he felt was exquisite, and feelings for little Claire were not part of any of his movements. He was controlled by the insane part of his mind, the one that he didn't understand, and how to get out was an entirely different manner; he could be 'crazy' for weeks, unable to have contact with the people he was closest to, or it could last mere hours.

Regardless of this, he saw his chance when Claire's back was turned. He saw the pumping of the blood beneath the delicate membrane of her neck, and just how beautiful she was physically. If he had been rational and had kissed her, he would not have considered this; he would have been licking his wounds that Claire had rejected him…but he had not. He was under the control of his split brain, the one that allowed him to have two personalities almost, both completely focused on science, yet one more detached from the real world than the other.

It was this insane patch that had him striking, lunging forwards and biting into her neck, throwing her into the wall to get a better grip on her. It was the part of him that was controlled by bloodlust and confusion, that would allow him to appear normal and request his employee to enter the building when he was actually fighting an inner battle, and it had him eagerly sucking her blood, wanting her to be the replacement Ada.

Yet it was with the _other_ part, the part that surged through when he was mid draining the screaming girl, that came to the rescue, forcing his fangs out of her neck, ending with her in his arms, limp and near lifeless.

All he could think was, w_hat have I done_?

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an2: I'd appreciate it if you didn't favourite/alert without reviewing.

If there's enough interest, I'll update it sooner than I would do otherwise, as I'll sacrifice some revision [HAH, non existent at the minute] to write for you, since I like the potential of this story.

Vicky xx


	2. Bonding

an: Thanks for the four reviews, guys! I'd appreciate more, though, if you're reading this.

I don't own anything - neither MV, nor TMI, which is where I think I got the idea about the "calling to" from, shown in this chapter!

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**chapter two:**

All in all, it was a pretty crappy early morning, even for Myrnin.

As he clutched Claire's body in his arms, all he could think was that he had finally managed it; he had managed to go crazy and then return to being completely sane, all within a few seconds. He had done it before, of course, when he suffered from the disease, but now he had no such excuse; he was back to his pre-disease self, and therefore he didn't have anything to be able to explain why he had acted the way he had – or any inclination to. All his actions had amounted to was the girl he loved, the girl who worked for him and yet had no inkling of his feelings for her, lying in his arms, and there was a very great chance that she would die.

His blood stocks were dangerously low, and he didn't think he had any of her blood type, anyway; he knew what her blood type did to him, so he tended to stay away from it, to ensure that he wasn't overcome by a desire for some of her blood. Without this transfusion, he knew that she had perhaps minutes; her heart was already slowing down, her breathing jagged and raw, as though she were running a race, yet he knew it was because she had to fight to get more oxygen into her body. She could have been able to curse him and yell in her mind about why she worked for such an _idiotic_ vampire, but she couldn't verbalise it, because she was losing control of her motor functions.

"Focus, Myrnin!" he growled to himself, wiping any remnants of blood from his mouth in order to eradicate any traces of what he had done. Only the taste of her blood on his tongue, down his throat, one that he knew would never leave, reminded him of what he had done – that, and the still bleeding bite marks in her neck, of course.

Slowly, he began to look around the room, trying to decide if he had the right equipment to put her onto a life support machine, or if he should go _straight_ to Amelie. She wouldn't be pleased; he still hadn't come through on his promise to try and bring Sam back, though he knew it would be near impossible, and that had only left her in a worse state of mind with him, as he felt that he had probably told her it would be easier than it was. No, he would much rather go to a hospital – hell, he'd rather go see _Oliver_ than Amelie – but he knew that vampire bite cases were being cracked down on by the authorities, so he couldn't take her anywhere officially.

His mind raced through every possible combination of drugs in the room, anything that could keep her body pumping the blood around at an average speed until he could get some more blood when the bank opened – there was no chance he was breaking in there, _none_ whatsoever – and then sort her out. But there wasn't the time; all of his artificial blood stocks, the ones that they were focused on developing to decrease the vampire's dependence on the human race, were the wrong blood type and he wasn't sure as to their reliability anyway, because the one test vampire who had tried them had instantly died. Scratch that; Myrnin was _sure_ that they were nowhere near to being ready for human use.

No, there was nothing drugs or human related inventions could do to help her. This was all _his_ fault; it seemed almost poetic justice that he would be the one who had to decide what he did to her now – either allow her to die, or turn her into a vampire…or there was a third option, one that he had never used before. He had only seen it happen once before, and that was many, many years ago, back in a time when vampires lived secretly, when there was none of the openness Morganville brought. He had seen Amelie bond with a young man who she had thought was childless; it turned out that he had a young girl, one left in his care due to her mother's death, and she would have been orphaned without her father.

So Amelie had given him her blood. She had done so in a way that meant there was no way he would be turned into a vampire, unless she had then chosen to drain him entirely in the near future; due to the complex nature of the change, only if there was adequate blood passed between them would the human be changed into a vampire, so this blood from her would have only ensured his human survival.

The man had then been tied to her from then until the blood had passed through his system; at nighttime especially, he desired to be close to the vampire who would, if he was turned, have sired him, and was responsible for his continued existence on the Earth. He seemed stronger to Myrnin, with some of his reflexes sharpened towards the point of the vampires', yet there was nothing startlingly different about him. And the desire to be near to Amelie, too, faded, until there came a point when her memory addling worked, and he was more than comfortable saying that he didn't know her.

_That_ was what he could try to do. Perhaps he had consumed far too much of her blood, having only managed to stop himself in the last few moments, perhaps he had left just enough for her to survive; whatever the case, he was going to try and do this, and if he had taken too much, he'd just have to turn her into a vampire, wouldn't he? That would work better for him because it would get her away from Shane and allow him to have eternity with her…she would just probably hate him more than anything and refuse to talk to him unless it was imperative to their survival.

Even then, she probably wouldn't, he considered with a wrongly timed hint of humour to his internal thoughts. He knew she would probably rather die than talk to him again, if he continued through and made her a vampire, just because her alive was far too valuable to him – and Amelie, naturally.

His mind filled with the idea that he could bring her back, Myrnin raised his wrist to his lips and tore down on the skin, hard. Blood began to spurt out, darker and thicker than human blood, due to the deoxygenated state of the plasma that ran through his veins, yet he didn't get caught on the beauty of it, as he usually did. He was too busy thrusting his wrist into her mouth, hoping that the noise of something breaking was in his head, and that he hadn't accidentally broken one of her teeth.

It was in his head; as his hand moved, he could see that all her teeth were pristine and intact…well…besides for the left incisor. That continued to have minute particles of the broccoli she had evidently eaten the night before.

And so, Myrnin waited.

**~x~**

It wasn't a nice experience, having your mouth filled with blood when you were alive enough to be able to taste every single drop of it. Claire had half hoped that she would be allowed to die, so then she wouldn't have to be disgusted with the man who she trusted more than anyone else (normally) but then she also hoped with the other half of her being that he would disobey her requests and turn her into a vampire. She could probably deal with him for eternity, she decided, and it would allow her a chance to be mad at him.

But this…this was a half way between _both_ of these; she was too alive to die, and she was too dead to survive for much longer. _His_ blood was only for those who were close to death, to turn them into something that could never die naturally, and it was too premature for him to give her it; he would have to have taken more blood than he had for it to work. Claire knew that it wasn't meant to feel like this; part of her was burning, like she was changing, yet the rest of her felt as if she were returning to normal. Even the blood in her mouth began to taste more and more like blood, if that were possible, even with the differences between that and the blood she would taste if she had bitten her lip.

And then her eyes snapped open.

She was lying on the floor of the lab, her body twisted into a position that ought to have been uncomfortable, yet it was strangely acceptable for her to be lying like that. She knew she was human – she could hear the beating of her heart, the blood thrumming in her eardrums – and yet she didn't understand how she could see _that_ bit better, see details in Myrnin's face that she had never seen before.

But the wrist still forcing blood into her mouth…_that_ she could have seen before, no problem.

Spitting the blood in her mouth out, she managed to shift out from under Myrnin's arm, something which had frozen over her, as though he had turned into a statue. Even as she rolled to her feet and ran towards the kitchenette – the first thing she did wrong, she realised; normal people would have ran instantly for the portal – he didn't budge an inch. It was almost as though he was made out of stone, and he couldn't move besides for the stream of blood from his wrist.

By the time she cautiously approached him again, having made the decision never to turn her back on him again, he had jerked himself into life, watching now as the blood flow staunched itself from his wrist, and he was merely sat on the floor next to where her body had once been.

As he opened his mouth, she opened hers, and instantly felt tired. She had barely gotten any sleep, and she ought to be _furious_ with Myrnin for the fact that he had firstly kissed her, and then he had almost killed her, but she didn't have the energy. Everything in the last fifteen minutes had drained her to the point that all she wanted to do was sleep for the next three days, and not be interrupted once, for anything.

"Don't say that you're sorry, because I know that you didn't mean it." Her voice sounded far too soft, even for her decision that she didn't want to be mad at him _now_, because she wanted to save it for when she was able to yell and not feel as though her head was about to explode. "All I want is to sleep, and then I want to yell at you about it…and you _will_ listen to me." Her voice sounded slightly harsher by the end, and she saw him flinch slightly, before stopping; he knew he deserved much worse than she was giving him, and that he would get even worse than that whenever Amelie saw him and found out what he had done.

He nodded, looking sheepish in his expression, yet there was something in his eyes that screamed confusion. _Has he done something he wasn't supposed to,_ Claire thought, _has he killed me, but just in a different way_? She didn't understand, but she knew that she just wanted to get to sleep somewhere, and think through everything whenever she woke up; something told her that near death experiences allowed for a longer lie in.

"I'll see you later," Claire continued, ignoring the fact that he hadn't actually verbally agreed that he would allow her to abuse him for his actions; she knew he would try and pull the 'I saved you' card, though she wasn't going to stand for it.

He turned and watched her as she backed away slowly, her hand reaching behind her for the doorknob to the portal, because she didn't trust him enough. He knew why. She knew why. It was understandable that she wouldn't trust him, yet she could already feel her resolve to hate him sinking with the pitiful expression that was creeping across his face.

"_Ow_!" she cried out as her hand connected with the brass doorknob, sending a shockwave through her; that ought not to have happened, right? "Fuck, Myrnin, why is your portal not letting me _leave_?" she continued, deciding to risk turning her back on him to try and force the door open with all her might – but it just wasn't _budging_!

He didn't dare to approach her, so she turned around and beckoned him forwards. Instantly, he reached out and turned the doorknob, allowing the portal to show the inside of Claire's bedroom, the location it had last been to.

"Thanks…" she muttered, confused as to why she couldn't open it as she tried to walk through.

And then she hit an invisible wall.

"What is going on?" she cried out, her voice reaching a shout as she tried to force her way through the portal, back to her room to sleep. "Myrnin! What are you doing?"

"I'm doing nothing, Claire, that I can assure you," he murmured, and she knew he was telling the truth; there was something about him that made her sure of that. "I…I have an explanation, though you're not going to like it."

"Was I ever going to like _anything_ again, after you tried to kill me and then brought me back to life?" she snapped, as acerbically as she could manage with her head killing. She crossed her arms across her chest as she leaned backwards against the invisible wall, hoping it held itself in place because otherwise she would be falling backwards onto her floor.

"To save you without turning you into a vampire, I had to employ a blood bond, of sorts, that I saw Amelie form with a human many centuries ago. You had lost little enough blood for this to work without you being changed, yet this forms a…_connection_ between the two of us, one that means you feel drawn to me for the duration my blood resides in your system."

Instantly, Claire reached across the small distance between them, and slapped him as hard as she could, squarely in the face. She knew that he could have moved, that he had to expect what she would do, and she half liked and resented the fact that he would so happily allow her to hit him…maybe what he had done wasn't just because he thought she was Ada…

"You _bastard_!" she snapped, anger surging through her again, the adrenaline knocking the desire to sleep to the back of her mind. "You mean to say that I can't get away from you until your blood leaves my system? Or that, in a short while, I'm not going to _want_ to get away from you, as I'll desire you so much?"

"In short, yes." His voice was low and muted as he allowed her to think through everything he had said. "I'm sorry, Claire, I didn't mean…"

"You knew what you were doing," she snapped back, her eyes blazing darker than he had ever seen them. Even though she looked nothing like Amelie, all Myrnin could do was compare her to the ruler of their town, with the way that she could convey all of her disgust in a frighteningly cold glare. "You knew that I would be bound to you for however long – incidentally, how long _does_ vampire blood take to leave the system? – and that you'd rather that than me be a vampire and hate you." She took a step forwards, ignoring his begun answer to her question. "Well, you failed, Myrnin. I think I hate you more for _this_ than I ever could for you attacking me."

And, with that, she stormed across the laboratory, deciding that he wouldn't hurt her as she walked, and reached his small, disused bedroom in the corner.

With all her might, she slammed the door as hard as she could, and felt a sweet flash of vengeance as the entire frame rattled.

_Let it fall down_, she thought evilly, _let everything fall down and burn._

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an2: Please don't favourite/alert/**_read_** without reviewing, thanks.


	3. Discoveries

**an:** thanks for reviewing! I don't own anything.

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After an hour of being locked in Myrnin's bedroom – though, admittedly, by her own choice – Claire was bored. She couldn't face sleeping, not when the adrenaline continued to pump around her body as a result of her near death experience, and just sitting there required patience she didn't have. It almost seemed as though the vampire blood, as well as improving her reflexes, meant that she had far too much energy than was normal in a human at just after four in the morning. She expected to feel less angry as time went on, as though she could begin to understand _why_ he had done it, yet the opposite was actually true; she couldn't _stand_ Myrnin now, and she didn't understand how she was going to be able to live in the same place as him for the next few weeks.

Or maybe longer: he had never given her a definitive date as to when his blood would leave her system, after all.

Even in his bedroom, which was merely fifteen metres from wherever Myrnin would be conducting his experiments, if that, she felt a sort of pulling towards him; it wasn't her, she knew, but rather his blood wanting to return home to his body, and it made her yearn to be close to him. All this did was make Claire certain that if it was a choice between chaining herself to the bed, and running after Myrnin, she would _definitely_ be doing the former.

But, by this point, she had ran out of things to count in the room, her legs began to feel shaky from incessant shaking – evidently, the vampire speed had a limit for humans – and she wanted some food from the kitchenette in the lab. Whilst she wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to talk to Myrnin, or if she would be able to do so without screaming the place down – something she preferred to leave for _him_ to do, so that any complaints from the neighbours would be about him – she knew that she wanted food, and that the want for food overruled everything else right then. It even overruled her desire to go home, because she knew that that was impossible, unless Myrnin went with her. And something told her that she didn't want to have Myrnin in the same house as Shane, unless she wanted either her boss or her boyfriend dead.

Claire strode out of the bedroom and towards the kitchenette as though she had no problem with Myrnin, though as she passed the laboratory area, she deliberately ignored him. Thankfully, he made no attempt to communicate with her, allowing her as much freedom as possible when she was trapped in the lab, and so she quickly made her way towards the cupboards for well sealed food. She would never trust anything that had the potential to go off, not in Myrnin's lab, not after the machine he spent an entire six months creating one day decided to melt down to iron core, and heat the lab up to almost seven hundred degrees centigrade.

Something told Claire that butter stored in the lab from then wouldn't be safe to go near, without at least a biohazard suit on.

"Are you willing to talk to me yet, Claire?" Myrnin's voice appeared from nowhere, and Claire grabbed at her heart involuntarily, out of shock; she would have thought that she could have at least had an _idea_ that he was moving, with her apparently heightened senses, but there was none. "Ahh, I apologise for the silent approach…I merely desired that you would _stay_ rather than move back into the other room, if you knew I was close." At least his apology _sounded_ sincere, Claire thought begrudgingly, since he normally couldn't even manage that.

"You know that I'm pissed off at you," she said, her voice carefully flat, as so to avoid shouting at him. "I'd appreciate it if you left me alone, because I can't go home unless _you're_ there as I need to be with you, and I don't think that you and Shane in the same house now you've done _this_ would be a good idea."

Myrnin merely blinked as she turned around to face him, no expression on his face other than a thoughtfulness that had Claire slightly worried. When Myrnin was sane and thoughtful, this generally spelled disaster for whatever it was that he hoped to achieve; in general, his plans only worked when they were so crazy, only a madman could think them up.

"You are going to be residing here for a relatively long period of time – approaching two weeks, I believe the average is – and so you evidently will have to tell your friends where you are," he commented, and Claire's heart lurched suddenly. "Naturally, it's up to _you_ whether or not you explain why you are living here, given that, as you said, Shane would not be particularly pleased to hear my name in conjunction with any plans. But what I will say is that, if you are so inclined, I shall take you home later on today for you to gather your required items and to say your goodbyes for the short term."

Claire's heart suddenly sank. "But…that means I won't see Shane for _two weeks_!" as she spoke, she realised just how much of a teenage girl she sounded, but then resolutely stuck her chin out. After all, she _was_ a teenager, and she was sure that she could get away with being impertinent some of the time, as well as being besotted with her boyfriend. "And, as you said, he won't be happy to hear your name—" she began to continue onto her first request, when Myrnin cut in.

"If you are about to ask that either he move in here, or I move into the Glass House, the answer is _no_," he told her firmly, something which almost had her arguing back until she remembered that what he said went…even if he _was_ the one who had caused this current predicament. "I…I shall speak with Amelie regarding this, when you are otherwise occupied; due to the closeness of our co-habitation, I fear that private conversations shall no longer be _private."_

_That's rich_, she thought bitterly, because it was because of _him_ that they were in this mess; just because he had screwed up and thought she was Ada, or at least someone who reciprocated his love, and then she had turned her back on him, allowing him to strike. Possibly, she could have gotten away, but that was about as likely as Myrnin turning into his fanged bunny slippers was, so basically impossible.

"Whatever," she replied, rolling her eyes and biting into the last of her chocolate breakfast bar. "Oh, and if I'm being forced to live here, you're going to take me to the supermarket later and get me some decent food…and a fridge that _hasn't_ had parts of brain stored in it, because that's absolutely disgusting."

Myrnin opened his mouth to protest – probably to explain that he had wiped down the fridge since human samples had been in it (he hadn't) and that everything was safe (it wasn't) – but then he closed it again, just as quickly; after all, he was the one who had caused this, and at least Claire hadn't been on the phone to get the artillery driving around to save her from nothing. "Very well, shopping it shall be, after dark. And we can order new equipment for the kitchen, if that is what you desire."

"After what you've had me warming up in a hot oven, I think I'll be ordering new _everything_ for this kitchen, if I've got to cook in it!" she replied, and realised that she hadn't succeeded in being angry. Her aim had been to let the anger build up, so she could attack him with a vicious torrent of words that he couldn't take, yet she couldn't do it, now she had the chance. She couldn't hate him for what he had done, and she didn't know _why_! A random thought that you can't hate those who you love passed through her head – she knew that well enough from Shane, who she would have damn right hated if she hadn't loved him – but she wasn't sure about that, as that would mean she was attached to her boss, right?

And that _certainly_ wasn't the case, since she was with Shane and he had basically promised her they'd be together for as long as mortality allowed them to be. That was something good about being in love with a human – besides the whole lack of being bitten, you knew that you would probably die around the same time. With vampires, it was either eternal love, or one would be alive when the other died.

Behind the pair of them, someone coughed, and Claire looked up to see Amelie had entered the laboratory; this was something unusual, given that she generally stayed away due to the lack of cleanliness and order in Myrnin's home. At least, it was unusual when Claire was there – she could recall maybe one or two visits by Amelie to the lab when she had been there, but maybe she came to visit Myrnin more – who knew? But as Claire looked up at Amelie, she could see the surprise at Claire's presence registering on Amelie's face, before quickly clearing into one of neutrality.

"Good morning, Claire, Myrnin." Amelie's voice was brisk and cool, and her eyes rested on Myrnin rather than Claire. "I did not expect to see you here so _early_ in the morning, Claire; I was under the impression that humans enjoyed to sleep in later on the weekends."

"Um…" Claire didn't know what to say; was she meant to keep quiet about what Myrnin had done and let him tell Amelie – especially since he had mentioned wanting to discuss the situation with the Founder – or did she tell Amelie herself, ensuring that the entire story was passed on, rather than a most likely edited version from Myrnin? "_Well_, you see—" she began to explain but Amelie cut her off, casting an impatient glance in her direction.

"Either inform me why you are here, or do not speak, child; I grow tired of your modern English babble which passes on no information whatsoever," Amelie said, and looked back at Myrnin once again. "Do you care to inform me, Myrnin, for I can be certain the reason is nothing to do with science?"

"I…how do you _know_ that?" he began to explain before his brow furrowed in confusion about how Amelie knew he hadn't called Claire in to help him with scientific experiments.

"I cancelled your debit card yesterday, Myrnin, and you have no usable chemicals in here. You would already have been battering down my door, if you had called Claire in to work." Amelie sighed at having to explain herself, and took a step closer to the pair of them. Her hair was tied up in an intricate bun, her outfit a cream coloured silk, Claire thought. "So, why _is_ Claire here?" the way she spoke, it was as though Claire wasn't in the room – which, to vampires, she probably wasn't. She had belonged to Amelie, had saved the town from ruin however many times, and yet she still wasn't worthy of being recognised when Amelie didn't want to talk to her.

Myrnin turned to look at Claire with a pleading expression, and she couldn't do anything but comply with his unspoken request. "If I can have your phone, I'll go into the other room so you two can have your very important vampire discussion," she sighed, holding her hand out for the phone she ensured he hadn't broken, simply by threatening to tell Amelie about one of his illegal experiments on Oliver if he _did_ break it.

"Why…oh, never mind," Amelie commented, about to ask why Claire needed Myrnin's phone before realising that she didn't really care. "Leave us."

Before turning back towards the bedroom – something which caused her heart to ache, since she had just _left_ that room – Claire shot Amelie the dirtiest, yet still relatively respectful glare she could manage. Well, she was sure she shot it at Amelie; something to do with the way that the two vampires were stood made her think that the person who would have felt it was for them'd be Myrnin.

An improvement on the last time she entered this room: she didn't slam the door. The only issue was that she now had to call Shane and tell him that she was ok – and using Myrnin's phone, which wouldn't make things _too_ complicated – but that she wasn't coming home, because…well…she hadn't actually reached that stage.

She just hoped that it would be easier to tell Shane than it would be for Myrnin to explain to Amelie; he _deserved_ that punishment.

_~x~_

On the other side of the door, Amelie waited for Myrnin to explain to her just _why_ Claire was here. "I presume she's not having a secret affair with you, and has left Shane early in the morning so she didn't have to explain, is she?" Amelie snorted slightly as she considered this possibility, indicating that she found it rather amusing and entirely improbable. "I doubt that, however; you are much too infatuated with her to be able to hold your tongue about such events from myself, or even Oliver, if it came to it."

"I…do you remember the young man in London?" Myrnin asked Amelie, unsure how to explain this. "The one who you almost drained, and yet gave him your blood to ensure that he survived – but as a human?"

Amelie was caught off guard by this reminder of the past, and it was evident in her face that she was remembering this time in her history. "Yes, I do recall him…but what does this have to do with why Claire is here?"

"Last night…I summoned her here. I wasn't entirely sane at the time, and I…I drank from her, far too deeply for her to survive as a human without intervention," he explained, the anguish in his voice evident to anyone. There was no hiding his emotions - that was for certain. "The blood bank was closed, I didn't have any stocks of her blood type and I didn't want to turn her into a vampire, as she had specified a desire never to be one. So I…I gave her my blood, and created a blood bond, one that would last until my blood left her system." By the end, his voice turned sheepish, particularly when the expression on Amelie's face turned to one of complete fury.

"You _fool_!" she snapped at him, and her hand moved so fast that he barely registered that it was moving towards his face. He recoiled back further than any human would have been able to survive, and it was sheer strength that he managed to stay on his feet, barely staggering at all. "Did you not realise that there was a _reason_ why I have never repeated that, nor taught any of the vampires I have created to do such a thing? Do you not realise that I would have shared this, if it meant that we did not then have to _kill_ humans, as we hunted?"

Myrnin said nothing, his eyes fixed on the far corner, the one barely visible due to the mountains of books that were piled high next to the bookcase.

"_Myrnin_!" Amelie hissed his name, forcing him to look at her. "Are you going to answer me?"

"I…I never thought of that," he admitted sheepishly. "What…_why_ did you not?"

She sighed deeply and placed her forehead on the tip of her fingers – a human gesture, one of the few movements that showed she continued to embrace her humanity, or at least to a point. "Because…unless the subject is of a certain disposition, and has the correct bodily fluids relative to the vampire, they are unable to survive for very long. I took a chance with the young man, back then; it was a gamble I was willing to take, and it worked – but with many others, it did not. Within days, their bodies rejected the blood. Some survived – they had regained enough human blood to overcome the vampire blood – yet most died."

"So...you are saying that there is a very slim chance she will survive, if she does not have her blood replaced most imminently?" he confirmed, and yet Amelie shook her head. "I don't understand, then, Amelie, because if not, you have just told me a story for nothing!"

"That would be the case if it was any vampire but _you_," she told him softly, and for the first time, she sounded as though she was not attacking him. She spoke as she would do to him if they were alone and under more friendly conditions – as friends. "Due to…the state of your blood, and it being so…_colourful_, and tainted by your human inherited illnesses, there is no way for Claire to survive with your blood in her. She will be overcome by madness, within days possibly, and it will be a kinder move to end her suffering, rather than trying to change her blood. The process may already be underway. Claire will _die_, Myrnin, and the town will be left in ruin, unable to be protected from itself, all down to _you_." By the end, her tone was no longer friendly; she was bitter and angry, completely in Founder mode, and she did not sound forgiving. Not that Myrnin realised this, of course.

He was silent as he processed this new information; thanks to his actions, she would die. And it would not be a pleasant death; she would be tortured to insanity by _his_ blood, with the drugs and the deformities caused by the drugs.

Claire would die – and soon.

And it was all because of him.

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**an2:** please don't favourite/alert/read without reviewing, thank you very much!

If I get 7 reviews on this chapter, everyone who reviewed [even anons] can request a oneshot, any pairing or scenario, and I'll write it for you.

Vicky x


	4. Decisions

**AN: **I don't own anything

Anyone who reviewed the last chapter, please feel free to inform me what oneshot you wish me to write you; it can be either just a pairing, or an entire scenario, but I'll try my best to write it for you.

* * *

As Claire had suspected, the phone call to Shane didn't go so well.

"What do you _mean_, you're trapped there?" Shane snapped down the phone, sounding actually angry with Claire, rather than just with Myrnin, as she had predicted. After all, she had done nothing but comply with wishes to go to work…it just transpired from there that Myrnin was thirsty and wanted to drink her blood, trapping her here until whenever she no longer had his blood in her system. None of it was _her_ fault, and it irked her that Shane was so quick to start yelling.

"As I have said _five_ times now," she began again, barely keeping her voice edge free, "I can't leave because of something Myrnin did, and Amelie knows about it. If she wanted me to leave, she'd find a way – you know she would. I'm sorry, Shane, but there's nothing I can do."

"You can at least sound a little bit _angry_ about the fact that you're not leaving _his_ shack for the next few weeks," Shane responded instantly, a sound in the background making Claire certain that he had just smashed a plate or two into the wall. "I mean, you don't even sound pissed that he tried to _kill_ you, Claire! The fact you're alive and not a vampire is just sheer luck, but you won't see it that way, will you?" his voice turned more like acid, and each word almost pierced Claire through the heart, if words could do such a thing. "You're _glad_ that you're there with him, aren't you? You're pleased to have an excuse to ogle him and fuck him and—"

"Don't you _dare_," she hissed, cutting him off midstream, her cheeks flaming red at the idea that Shane could continue to accuse her of something, particularly when she wasn't in the best place to be defending herself. "I have never done _anything_ to suggest to you that I would cheat, so just because there is a _chance_ doesn't mean that I would. I love you. Or is that too hard a concept for you to understand? Goodbye, Shane." She hung up the phone before she could be tempted to say anything further, or be subjected to more facetious lies spilling from the mouth of her so-called boyfriend.

Barely stopping herself flinging the phone into the corner of the room because she recalled at the last second that it was Myrnin's, not hers, and she didn't want to have to explain why she wasn't a hypocrite or anything like that, Claire threw herself onto the bed and buried her head in the pillow. It still smelled of the strange lavender and citrus scent it had when she had slept in here before, during the time of her science-arrest thing that meant she couldn't leave until the machine was 'fixed'.

All she wanted to do was to leave the room, to go into the lab and to mix as many chemicals together as possible to create some sort of bomb to throw at something, because _that_ was how mad she was; it wasn't her usual standards of madness, but she felt that she had the right to go blow up some unoccupied area of the Texan desert because of everything that had happened in the last five or six hours alone. But she couldn't even do that; she had to wait until Amelie left, because she was pretty certain that the Founder wouldn't be particularly impressed with her interrupting of what could be a very important meeting. Conversely, it could just be Amelie wanting to discuss the strength of her tea, but even _that_ would have to be private.

So, for now, Claire was stuck in the bedroom. And little did she know that her very fate was being discussed in the other room.

_~x~_

"No," Myrnin snapped as soon as Amelie suggested it, "absolutely not! She is not an animal to be put to the slaughter house! Have you forgotten how much she has done for this town, for _you_?" his voice cracked as he reminded Amelie just _how_ much Claire had done for the town as a whole, as well as almost every individual Amelie considered important. Claire had even managed to save Sam, even though, ultimately, his life was taken.

"I am quite well aware of how much she has done for us; I am grateful to her for that," Amelie replied sharply, her eyes shooting daggers into Myrnin. "But—"

"But she has outlived her purpose, and now she is in danger because of my actions, you no longer wish to take responsibility for her," Myrnin finished for her, his voice dangerously cold. Not for many, many years had he wholly contested Amelie, yet this was a situation which he felt he had no choice but to at least _try_; he had gotten Claire into this mess, and he was certain that he would not give up without at least attempting to save her.

"Quite the contrary, Myrnin," Amelie's voice rivalled her friend's, yet it had the edge of something that Myrnin didn't quite have – power, and a lot of it. "What I desire for Claire is not to _suffer_. You have caused this, and you cannot blame anyone but your own, sorry self. Yet why must you try and force Claire to endure pain when she has no need to? If we end her life now, quickly, it will all be over before it has properly begun. She will die herself, with dignity and grace, and you know that this is the best for everyone involved." There was no question in her answer to Myrnin's statement – she was making the decisions, and there wasn't a chance that Myrnin could change her mind.

"You won't even allow me to try?" he asked, his voice no longer cold and icy; it was cracked and broken, that of a man who knew he had the potential to lose everything he held dear to him. "You have allowed me to try for so many other things, Amelie, so why can I not try and save this one girl? If it doesn't work, you can kill her painlessly. But at least allow me a short period of time to remove the blood and its effects from her system. _Please_."

He hadn't pleaded with Amelie for so long, and it took skill to remember everything that he had done in the past in order to gain whatever it was he wanted; he had to bow his head, try and make his eyes wide and pleading, eradicate all possibility of him not being completely sane – something he usually just suppressed for three or four hours – and ensuring that what he wanted didn't impact on Amelie negatively. All he had to do was appeal to her human side, the one very few people knew how to reach, and he hoped that this would be enough. It was all he had. If she didn't accept this, then he had no further chances to save Claire.

Amelie hesitated, and he was preparing to thank her – the words were on the tip of his tongue when she said, "no, Myrnin, I cannot. I'm sorry, but I believe that it is in Claire's best interests to die before she has a chance to be addled by whatever it is within your blood. I shall send Oliver over shortly to complete it, for I cannot trust you to be detached enough to kill the girl I know you harbour feelings for."

Tears spilled over Myrnin's cheeks as he realised he had lost; he had no chance to save Claire, no way to save her from the death that his blood would bring, and the only time he had was however much he could delay Oliver by. He was possibly down to _hours_ with Claire, hours in which to try and save her, to make her understand that he wasn't _just_ thinking of Ada when he kissed her – he wanted to kiss her also, yet his mind just didn't understand.

"Please," he tried once more, his final, half hearted attempt to try and make Amelie change her mind. He knew it was futile, that Amelie had decided long before that Claire would not be leaving this laboratory alive, and that possibly, this had worked out well for the Founder – she would not be charged with having to order the destruction of her most helpful pet whenever Claire's usefulness ran out, and instead could blame _him_ for Claire's destruction. Everything worked out for Amelie.

It just didn't work out quite as well for the people around her.

"I'm not going to change my mind, dear Myrnin," Amelie replied softly, her hand resting on her friend's shoulder. "Oliver will be over at sunset to complete the deed. I can allow you a few hours to say your goodbyes and…anything else you may wish to say. Goodbye, Myrnin, and know that this was not an easy decision to make."

As she walked away, he glowered after her, trying desperately to wipe away all traces of the tears he had shed for fear that Claire would emerge shortly. _Yes it was_, he thought mutinously, _it was convenient for you, for Claire to die; do not lie_.

Not for the first time, Myrnin wondered if Amelie could read minds, when she turned back at the portal to look at him. Her mouth opened a fraction, indicating her speaking, before she closed it and turned around without a word. It was in that moment that Myrnin decided he didn't care if Amelie knew what he was thinking; she deserved it.

Now, he had only eleven hours to find a way to save Claire. Something told him that that was most certainly not going to happen.

_~x~_

Not long after Amelie left, Myrnin crossed the laboratory to the bedroom, the door of which he rapped with a harsh knock. "Claire, I desire to speak with—oh, you're here," he began to call through the door, before the intended girl had opened the aforementioned piece of wood and was looking at him.

"Yes?" she asked, frowning slightly. "Has Amelie gone, or…?"

"Oh, yes, _Amelie_ has left," he replied, his tone slightly too acerbic when saying Amelie's name. "I wished to ask whether or not you desired to depart for the shops, for you wanted to purchase some items, did you not?" part of him wanted to tell her everything, to tell her that this was her last day and that she should spend it doing whatever she wanted to do, but he couldn't face that. He couldn't hurt her, not again, not when he had already subjected her to being separate from her friends, and was the reason for the ending of her life. She didn't need to know that she had an appointment with the firing squad – Oliver – did she?

"Sure, I don't really care," she said, shrugging as she handed him his phone back. "Let's go now, shall we, because it's not like there's anything else I can do here, is it?" she didn't notice that her attitude was…there was something there. And it was then that Myrnin realised just _how_ serious Amelie had been about the effects of his blood taking hold so quickly; he had thought she was exaggerating to hurt him, to make him more able to accept the fact that Claire had to die. But now…now he could see that there were already the tiny, almost imperceptible changes to her personality that only people who knew her well would notice – and this was one of them. She was getting moody for no good reason, and he knew that it would only be minutes before she was bounding along, happy as Larry.

"I'll drive, given that my blood doesn't allow you to see through heavily tinted glass, and Amelie may murder us both if we tried to use the portal into student heavy areas," he tried to joke as they walked side-by-side through the lab and towards the steps in the corner of the open-plan room.

"Come on then, let's shop!" Claire said, and there was already a jovial hint to her tone as she bounded up the steps and out into the open air. She stayed within a good ten metres of Myrnin's relatively human speed walk, deciding not to push her luck with any invisible walls blocking her from places without her blood-donator, and hesitated as he swung into the wooden shack behind Granma Day's house, where his barely used car was stored.

"Buckle up, and make sure that you keep your head low at all times," Myrnin warned her, reversing the car out of the shed with relative success – he only collided with the door twice, something Claire found hysterical, and achieved knocking over only three different canisters of paint.

As he drove, Myrnin kept an eye on Claire. Her moods…it seemed almost _too_ textbook, that she would already be displaying symptoms of this extremity so quickly after being given his blood, and that suggested to him that it could already be too late. He could only be trying to find another solution to the disease, as he was with himself, and he didn't want that. But there was a _chance_ that she wasn't permanently affected by the drugs, and as Myrnin drove through the relatively congested streets of Morganville, he found himself preoccupied thinking about how he could possibly save Claire, one idea involving changing her blood into a _cow_, before then switching the blood back once it was once clean.

Needless to say, his attention was not on the road, and there were many, _many_ near misses on the way to the shops on the outskirts of Morganville, not close to the boarder patrol where Myrnin knew the forcefield would be in action for all Morganville residents. Even he was controlled by them, even though he technically directed what the machine did, because Amelie had supreme control, and her word overruled the creator's.

"We're here?" Claire confirmed, having never actually bought electrical appliances before; the ones in the Glass House remained from when Michael's parents had owned the house, and Claire doubted that Shane and Eve even knew where this shop was, much less would be able to afford much in it.

"We're here," Myrnin confirmed, walking forwards and taking Claire's arm as he did so. "Now, you must pretend to be with me, even though I am _quite_ well aware that you do not want to be—never mind. If we do not appear to be an…what is the phrase, ahh, yes, _item_, then they often separate the two people, in order to make more money. You cannot be separated from me, therefore we have a slight problem if they want to. Do you understand?"

Claire nodded, scowling simultaneously, and yet her ears picked up on his abandoning of her not having feelings for _him_. Part of her instantly assumed that she was reading too far into it, and that she had just misheard him completely, but the rest of her was certain that maybe, just maybe, Shane's opinion that there was something between the two of them wasn't _entirely_ based on falsehoods.

But she didn't have time to think about that then; she had to shop, and she would be damned sure that she would buy the most expensive items possible, if only to damage Myrnin's bank balance as greatly as possible.

Little did she know that, if Amelie got her way, she would never live to see them delivered.

_~x~_

"You wished to see me, my Queen?" Oliver bowed ever so slightly as he stood before Amelie, his tone once again respectful and humble.

"Yes, I have a task I regrettably must ask you to undertake," Amelie sighed, stirring the platinum spoon within her china teacup for something to do rather than look at Oliver directly in the face. "Claire has been infected by Myrnin's blood."

"And?" Oliver scoffed, sitting down opposite Amelie, no longer quite as formal. "He can come up with a cure, as per usual, and then settle back down in his hole whilst she marries that Collins boy. It's all fate, Amelie."

"No, you are quite mistaken there, my dear Oliver," she replied, lifting her gaze from the brown liquid to look in Oliver's direction. Her focus was the mirror behind his head, one that refracted the minimal light in the room and made her certain that not one hair was out of place on her head, and yet she was barely able to see that as she continued to talk. "The blood has already began to infect her system and brain, as it did with so many others in our shared history. Do you remember what happened to John le Carope?"

"He was a human…and I believe he went quite mad," Oliver said, his face screwed up as he tried to recall the details. "I forget much more that the basics, but I recall that he…he had consumed a vampire's blood, not quite enough to turn him, and then he died within three weeks. It was a horrible death, wasn't it, for he had gone quite mad."

"That is the fate Claire faces, Oliver." Amelie's tone was no longer pleasant, or anywhere near the emotion; it was businesslike and direct. "Whilst it is not what I desire to do, I have no choice but to have her destroyed. She cannot be cured, I am certain of it, and I…I feel I owe her the right to a decent death, rather than to suffer through the loss of her mind. Myrnin's blood means that there can be no cure, due to the vast array of chemicals he has taken throughout the years, and therefore I feel it in her best interests to kill her."

"Tonight?" Oliver correctly presumed, though he at least had the decency to appear a little troubled by the murdering of someone like Claire Danvers. "Are you quite sure, Amelie, for—"

"Myrnin has already asked me this, and my answer has not changed!" she hissed in response, her eyes blazing silver. "It is not an easy decision to have made, and it was made with Claire's best interests at heart. I had hoped that she would continue to be useful to me for many, _many_ more years to come, yet Myrnin has meant this is no longer possible. Due to what she has done for us all, Oliver, she deserves the right to die with her mind still intact."

"That is a privilege that very few in Morganville deserve, humans and vampires alike," Oliver muttered, and Amelie changed her gaze to be focused on his face, eyes locked within one another.

"Yet it is one that belongs to her," Amelie said softly, and Oliver bowed his head in agreement.

"It shall be done by sunrise, I assure you," he promised the Founder, no smile gracing his lips. "It shall be quick and merciful, I can assure you of that. I normally care not about murdering humans, but when they are as young as her, and have done so much for us…it is a tragedy. She would have made a great vampire."

As he left the room as suddenly as he arrived, Amelie had to agree; Claire Danvers _would_ have made a great vampire.

Yet she now had to die due to actions made in the name of love, according to Myrnin.

Just another reason why not to fall in love.

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**AN2: Please **don't favourite, alert or read without reviewing. Thank you.

Vicky xx


	5. Insanity

_Chapter 5:_

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"Myrnin." Claire said his name softly, her hand on her forehead to try and alleviate the pain in her head. "Myrnin, stop. My head hurts," she continued in explanation, her other hand pulling on the sleeve of his jacket to stop him advancing further forwards.

Immediately, he turned around to face her, his brow furrowing with worry and confusion mixed to form a strange emotion, and he moved towards her awkwardly, unsure what to do. "Has it came on rather suddenly, Claire?" he asked her softly, aware of the hypersensitivity of her brain and so he making an effort to speak in much duller tones. "You didn't have it when we were playing with the coffee machines, I am sure of it." Something to do with the fact that she wasn't writhing around on the floor in agony whilst the machines whirred behind them gave him that impression, and yet there was no flippant comment back from Claire.

"Uh, yeah, quite sudden I guess," she whispered, wincing as she moved her mouth. She didn't understand just how it had struck her; normally, whenever she had a headache, there was a build up to it that meant she was stressed, or she was ill – and as far as she was aware, she was neither of them! Her stress levels had begun to go back to the average now she had sorted out her accommodation for the next few weeks – something she was more excited about than she would admit, being able to have 24/7 access to the equipment in the lab – and illness only struck at _really_ inopportune times, like when she had finals worth her entire semester's grade, or something like that. "Myrnin, why am I ill?" she found herself asking him, her voice wobbling as she spoke, "I'm _never_ ill. It's something to do with this…this blood, isn't it?"

He sighed, unable to help himself; he should have realised that Claire was far too clever to not attribute the blood change to the headache. She wouldn't have noticed her mood swings, especially since they were so slight, yet something like a headache, she would have noticed straight away.

Ahead of them, the two shop assistants had stopped a respectful distance away, and Claire could tell that they were waiting for her to sort herself out, a bored expression on both of their faces. One of them was talking frantically to the other, and Claire focused on her lips, trying to force herself to concentrate through the pain – but it was too much.

"It may do," Myrnin replied carefully, ensuring that there was no definite correlation between the events. He didn't want her to know that she would be killed that evening, as he hadn't managed to save her, because he wanted her last hours to be normal, rather than her worrying about the date with the executioner. But he wanted to tell her the truth before she died, so that wherever she went afterwards, she wouldn't think that he had betrayed her – or that Oliver had betrayed Amelie.

"Can you make some sort of ointment or something then, if it's related to you?" Claire asked, realising that she could just about stand to look at the other woman, who was now talking, rather than just one of them.

And, just like that, the headache was gone. Claire removed her hand from her head in shock, unable to get how she could have something that came on so quickly, and yet found itself to have reached its peak pain-threshold within less than three minutes. "I most certainly can," Myrnin replied, yet Claire shook her head, waving him off with the hand that was previously gripping to her head as though it was clinging on for dear life.

"I…it just went," she said in means of explanation as they walked towards the television sets in the back corner of the shop that was larger than Claire's expectations. "That's weird, huh? I mean, have you ever treated anyone with a headache for only a few moments?" she pressed on, and Myrnin found himself gritting his teeth, wondering whether he could dare lie to her. The seventeen year old had always had a certain ability to see whether he was telling falsehoods or fabricating part of the story, and yet today, he had no choice _but_ to lie.

"It isn't uncommon," Myrnin said in response, and Claire didn't notice anything wrong with his voice; it was perfectly pitched, at its usual tone, and just seemed normal. Little did she know that he was fighting to gain this normality on the inside. "Normally, one receives these temporary pains in their brain when one sleeps – often, they are the reason why you wake up at odd hours during the night – but they can occur during the day." his explanation seemed reasonable enough to Claire, who continued to walk alongside him as they caught up to the sales assistants ahead of them.

Realising she had scope to play her part as his girlfriend well, Claire laughed as she said, "_darling_, we must simply get you some new clothes! Your fashion sense is so awful, I can barely be seen with you!" turning to the nearest assistant, she added on, "he's extremely fashion-phobic, you see; he needs me to do everything for him."

Little did she know just how right she was with the last clause of her sentence.

_~x~_

Having arranged to have the things delivered to the laboratory the following morning – something Myrnin felt would be pointless, given that the intended recipient would be _dead_ by then – the two of them headed back to their base via the same mode of transport they had arrived there in: Myrnin's car.

Not that Claire didn't complain about it, "if I have to spend more than another minute in this car, I _will_ scream!" she told him harshly, her hands gripping tightly onto the seat on either side of her legs. "You're an awful driver, and you're—you're hideous, and ugly, and really nasty! I don't get why you want to be my friend because I _hate you!"_ the last words she _did_ scream, and so loudly that Myrnin stopped driving in a panic.

It took him a few seconds to register what was going on, that Claire was behaving like a lunatic because of the effects of his blood in her system, and that she needed to be calmed down immediately. He didn't ever want to see her like this, yet he knew that if she decided to get out of the car, she would fight and scream to be released – and that given the fact he crashed into so many immobile decorative things that littered the high street, she would have ample time to get out of the car whilst he corrected this.

"Claire," he said her name softly, and in the back of his mind, he recalled when she had whispered his name equally gently to try and make him calm down. He had been in the latter stages of the disease then, yet that combined with his inherited form of madness must have meant that humans were affected quicker than he was. "You need to calm down, because it isn't good for you; you're going to hurt yourself, and you don't want to do that, do you?" he wasn't sure if he was doing it right, especially when she turned to face him, screaming words that he couldn't decipher, her eyes blazing with the shadow of the illness that was consuming her, and he became certain it was wrong when she reached out and scratched him.

Somehow, she had managed to find the strength to dig through his skin, right down to the bone, and streams of blood issued from the four scratch marks; it was all he could do not to go crazy himself, to keep calm and remember that this was his fault…to remember that he couldn't hurt her, not without her understanding what was going on.

"LET ME GO!" she shrieked as his hands went out to restrain her shoulders, twisting her body so that she was facing the window, yet somehow still sitting in the chair. "I HATE YOU!" she continued, and no matter what Myrnin said, she wouldn't shut up. He said everything she had said to him when he suffered, because he could recall the key phrases that had somehow brought him back to sanity, yet nothing worked with Claire.

In the end, he realised that he needed to get her back to the laboratory and that he couldn't do it with her continually screaming and thrashing to get out of the car. This left him one option: he pressed his fingers into her neck to find the pressure point that would make her fall unconscious, and used it, almost revelling in the silence that followed. It was wrong for him to do that, especially as he pushed Claire back down into the seat so that he could drive home as safely as possible, because it was his fault she was like this…and she only had a few hours of this time left.

Myrnin's driving on the way home was worse than when he focused on it fully, like he had been on the way to the shops, no matter how much he wanted to do it perfectly. He could attribute this to the tears in his eyes.

_~x~_

Forty minutes later, Claire woke up on the bed in Myrnin's back room, unable to recollect how she had gotten from the electrical shop back to the lab; the last thing she remembered was paying for the goods and heading out to the car, and then nothing. Nothing that made any sense to her, at least; as she swung her legs off the bed, she noticed the telltale signs that she had been held against her will, and that corroborated with the hazy memories she had of her screaming and demanding that Myrnin let her out of the car. She had wanted to kill him, to hurt him as badly as she possibly could, to destroy everything she could manage to – and that scared her, as she recalled that.

Whether it was a dream or not, she couldn't be sure until she saw Myrnin standing in the doorway.

The expression on his face was one that she had never seen before; she had seen his usual expression of sadness, even potential desolation when Ada had died, and she knew when he was worried. This one was almost as though he had been crushed, that everything he had ever dreamed of was in smithereens, and that he knew there was nothing he could do about it. It was one of someone giving up, of him worrying so much that he knew he couldn't affect the outcome of something – what, Claire didn't know – and that was the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle for Claire. Red rings rimmed his eyes, and there were mostly-healed scratch marks on his face that fitted another part of what she felt she had dreamed – it must have been true.

"Are you…are you well?" he asked her gently, speaking to her in a voice reminiscent of how Amelie had spoken to Myrnin the first time they had met. "You feel…normal?"

Slowly, Claire nodded, though she felt tears sliding down her face and she knew she was crying. "What…what's _happening_ to me?" she burst out, the tears giving way to full-blown sobs as she buried her face in her hands. "I think I went a bit weird earlier, getting mad at nothing…but I remember the car. I remember you making me calm down but I didn't want to and I, I _scratched _you! I don't know how I got here, and I can't explain why, but my head feels as though it's breaking apart into little pieces—and there's _nothing_ I can do!"

Her gaze lifted from her palms to Myrnin's eyes, the near-black orbs merely centimetres from her face now. "What's happening to me?" she repeated, somehow managing to make herself understandable around the large lump in her throat.

She noticed that he wanted to retain some information from her, yet that he made the decision to not do such a thing when she narrowed her eyes at him. Even through the tears, she could see that he was breaking, breaking more than he had when he had suffered from the vampire world-wide disease, and that he didn't know what to do – or want to do what he was about to do. Either way, he was confused and forlorn, and that made Claire certain that whatever it was, she didn't want to know it. Yet she had to; if she was changing, if something was happening to her, she _had_ to be aware of it!

"I'm so sorry, Claire," he began quietly, taking one of her tear-soaked hands in his. "But…but you're dying. And if Amelie has her way, your life will be over tonight."

* * *

AN2: I'd appreciate it if you didn't favourite, or alert without reviewing, thanks.

& I'll write a oneshot for the chapter's eighth reviewer.

Vicky


	6. Explanations

_Chapter 6:_

* * *

Claire could only gaze at Myrnin in shock.

"_What_?" she breathed, her jaw barely moving as she said one of her most frequently used words. "What did you say? That I…that I'm _dying_?" she couldn't believe her ears.

In the moments since she had realised something was wrong with her, Claire had never considered death; she thought that Myrnin could cure her, like he had cured himself and the other vampires, and that if it meant staying here even longer, she'd do it. But to find out that there was no hope before anything had begun – because he hadn't started on a cure for her, after all – and for the death to be so _soon_…Claire felt cheated, and petrified.

Myrnin's eyes were broken when he looked at her, just like the rest of him – not literally, but the emotions evident inside them. Their dark colour made it even more obvious, and as he reached out to take Claire's hand, there was a gentleness about him that she had never seen before. Evidently, it only came out when the lab assistant he generally abused was near to death.

"I'm afraid so, Claire," he said quietly, his finger running over the back of her hand in an attempt to soothe her. "And it shall be very soon, if Amelie gets her way," he continued, resisting telling her that he now agreed with Amelie. Claire had gotten too out of control in the car, and it was advancing far too quickly for him to even consider finding a way to help her.

Tears filled Claire's eyes and she found herself wrapping her arms around Myrnin's neck, praying that he wouldn't push her away; she was tied to him in her final hours, and she needed someone to comfort her. Technically, he had done this to her, but that wasn't what she was angered about.

"Are you not even _trying_ to keep me alive?" she whispered, anguish causing her voice to break. "You're just giving up, letting Amelie have her way to _kill_ me?"

She felt Myrnin's hands on her face as he pushed her back slightly, so they could look into the other's face. He was wiping the tears from her face, leaving their tracks smudged and non-defined. "I tried, I swear," he replied, and Claire believed him. "You cannot understand how hard I tried whilst you slept; I thought of everything I had done to my blood to keep my illness at bay, and considered it. But then Amelie made me realise, through examples of attempts in the past, that our blood isn't compatible—and with the issue of my disease, that only makes it even more incurable. I'm so, so sorry, Claire."

She nodded slowly, the hysteria draining from her body in one heartbeat, as she began to consider her own death in a clinical manner. "And…what about the drugs, can they not control your disease in a human…even though it is a human disease?" she asked.

Myrnin's shaking of his head confirmed Claire's thoughts. "No. It's much too dangerous, and there is no time to decrease their intensity on your body; you need the strength I have, yet the human body cannot cope with it."

"An entire blood transfusion, replacing the old with new stocks from the Donation Centre?" was Claire's next suggestion. She had more hope in this one, because it seemed simple enough to have bypassed the problem; if the problem was in the blood, then removing it would surely give Claire her sanity back.

Once again, Myrnin shook his head, and Claire felt her hopes dive immediately. "I'm afraid not. The disease does not stay in the blood; it transfers itself into the brain and there, it buries itself in order to affect your motor functions. That's how it controls you, makes you do and say things you would never normally otherwise. It's not as simple as just being your blood, Claire. The only way to remove it would be to remove your brain."

She nodded again, slowly enough to ensure that she didn't lose herself amidst the extreme emotions she was feeling. After all, she was approaching her death like a high-speed train that was destined to reach its destination far earlier than timetabled. And it left her with one final option.

"What about vampirism?" she whispered. It was something she didn't want, but that she would accept if it meant she could live past today, tell Shane that she loved him every day, or discover what it was that had sprung up between herself and Myrnin. "If you turned me into a vampire, I'd be fine, right?"

Myrnin shook his head, and this final shake was what sent Claire over the edge. She stood up, pushing him away from her as she tried to fight the tears again; she wanted to be rational, she truly did, but she had lost all her options to survive, and now…now she was certain that she would die tonight.

"_Why_?" she wailed, burying her face in her hands. "Why me? Why do I have to die? Myrnin, why can't you save _me_? You've saved everyone else you love – Amelie, Ada to an extent – why can't you save _me_?" she knew she was being selfish, but she had no other way to consider the situation: she was dying. And her death would soon be upon her, a fact she couldn't comprehend, no matter how many times she repeated it.

Within seconds, Claire found herself in Myrnin's arms, and even if she had wanted to be released, there would have been no chance. His grip was firm and comforting, his face buried in her hair, and Claire had the feeling that she was comforting him as much as he was comforting her.

"I don't know, my little Claire," he told her honestly. "I don't know why fate has allowed all of us to survive, and yet not you. You, with the greatest potential of all, someone who could challenge myself in the future, deserve to live. And yet I, someone who was born like this, someone who has done anything to try and avoid the menace inside, am allowed to survive. I see no justice in this, Claire, and for that I am truly sorry."

She was waiting for herself to begin to fight with him, to scream and yell that it was his fault she was dying because he had mistaken her for Ada, and then bitten her, causing him to leave her almost dead. But the anger never came. She couldn't get angry with Myrnin, not when he was like this – and perhaps that was her biggest downfall, perhaps Myrnin was her greatest sin, someone who she could never truly hate.

"Would turning me into a vampire have had the same effects?" she whispered into his shirt front, noting how it was soaked with her tears.

"Yes," he breathed into her ear. "It would. Thanks to me, you would have either lived a life of madness, like me, or died, as you are doing. I doomed you the moment I realised I…" he trailed off, stopping himself midway through a sentence, and whilst Claire knew she could have pressed him to continue, she didn't want to. Myrnin evidently didn't want to tell her this, and she didn't want to waste her final hours pleading, begging and, finally, yelling to get him to tell her something which would probably crush her more than she was already being.

"Will it…hurt?" she found herself asking the commonest of questions about death, the one that always got a cliché answer in the movies because nobody ever answered it straight.

Myrnin, however, made her believe him when he said, "no. I'll make sure of it. And Amelie insisted that it be painless; you do mean something to her, after all."

"Nice to have to be dying for her to show it," Claire muttered, somehow managing to laugh through the tears, creating a choking sound. "Who will do it?" was her next question, the most pressing of them all: if it was Amelie, then she knew it would be quick and painless, even if it would feel like a stab in the back after all she'd done for her; Oliver would probably do what he was told, but he may take out his hatred for Shane on her and not kill her mercifully…and Myrnin. Myrnin…if he killed her, she knew he wouldn't linger, wouldn't cause her unnecessary pain, but it would destroy her as she led up to her death, and him as long as he lived.

"I don't know," he told her softly. "All I know is that it will be after midnight. Amelie wanted you to be able to live your life for one more day."

"Can you leave me alone for a few minutes?" Claire asked hesitantly, somehow disengaging herself from Myrnin's arms as she wiped her nose. "I just need…some time to think this through, and to understand that it's the end."

"Of course," Myrnin agreed to her request without a moment's pause, moving towards the door as he spoke.

As Claire half fell, half jumped onto the bed, ready to cry her eyes out in peace, she heard, "I'll do anything for you, Claire. I promise."

She didn't know how to tell him that he couldn't.

_~x~_

Myrnin kicked the bucket outside of the bedroom door; it sailed across the lab and collided with one of the three hundred thousand dollar machines, shattering it into fragments of glass. He didn't care; Claire's life was worth far more than that, and she was dying; the machine could, too.

He had lied to her about when she was going to die. He told her midnight, knowing that it would make her believe she had longer to do things, yet also longer to worry, so that when the time came, she wouldn't know. She could die without fear, die without knowing she was going to die – or, rather, the time at which she was going to die – and Myrnin was certain that that would be better for her. He didn't think that he could cope with seeing her face if she saw Oliver or Amelie, or himself if he was to be her killer, approaching to strike the killer blow, knowing that one of the people she had helped protect for so long was going to end her life.

"Why, oh _why_, can there be no solution to this?" he growled to himself, gripping his hair with his hands and yanking as he fell to the floor. Insanity threatened to overcome him, great waves of darkness wanting to pull him under the surface and let him be free from this pain, but he couldn't; he had caused this, and he had to stay until its end.

In the other room, Myrnin could hear Claire crying. He knew that she was struggling to cope with what he had told her, no matter how well-put together she had seemed when he passed on the news, and that the knowledge she wouldn't live to see another day would be tearing her to pieces.

So he decided to do something that he hated himself for deciding, something that would end in his being abused, most likely, but may even make Claire realise how she felt for him.

He decided to call in the Glass House gang to visit Claire on her deathbed.

Myrnin just hoped that their ten minute visit wouldn't coincide with one of her losses of control.

* * *

Please don't favourite or alert without reviewing.

I didn't update because I was busy, ill and doing some rping on tumblr.

I'll update when I get 15 reviews, and I'll write a oneshot for the first one.


	7. Invitations

_Chapter 7:_

Sorry for the delay with the update-I forgot that I had written this chapter already, so went to do it yesterday just to discover its existence.

PhantasmagoricalPandemonium - if you would like to request a oneshot, please do so, since you 'won' it.

* * *

Myrnin hated Shane.

He hated the way that the boy had such a pull over Claire, had an ability to ensure that she did whatever he wanted her to, just by using the words, "_I love you."_

He also realised that he hated himself even more, because it was _him_ who had caused this; it was him who had sentenced Claire to death because he was too selfish to let her die—or even to be with Shane. He had wanted _her_, and now, he had killed her. She would pay the price for his actions—and he would pay it for the rest of his existence.

"Hello, Glass House!" Eve's chirpy voice answered the landline, and Myrnin hesitated a moment; he didn't know what to say. He knew that he couldn't tell them _why_ Claire was here—or, at least that she was dying—but it was obvious that it was something serious if he wanted them to come down. After all, the last time Shane was in his laboratory, there had been a threat on Myrnin's life—and that wasn't pleasant.

"I…this is Myrnin," he said slowly, closing his eyes as he tried to think of what he wanted to say, and how to say it. "I didn't know how else to contact you…"

"Is Claire alright?" was Eve's immediate question, and the worry in her voice nearly had Myrnin in tears he couldn't afford to shed. _This_ was true friendship—knowing when someone could be in danger, and being worried for them—and he hated himself for having to lie. She had asked the one question he didn't want her to ask, because _of course_ Claire wasn't alright! She was dying, but he couldn't tell the Rosser girl that.

"I, _Enoby_, is it?" Myrnin began, even though he knew perfectly well this was Eve; it was his attempt to sound as though he was his usual self.

"It's _Eve_," she sighed, but he could still hear the worry in her voice. He hadn't answered her question, after all.

"Claire wants to talk to the three of you," he said quietly, trying to stop his hands clenching into fists by picking up bottles from the lab bench. It didn't work; it merely meant that he crushed bottles of chemicals and was potentially about to start a chemical fire. "In person, that is. If you wouldn't mind, it would be appreciated if you come down to the laboratory immediately."

"Is she alright?" Eve asked again, and this time, he heard anger in her voice. "Tell me, vamp, or I swear, I'll…" she didn't need to finish the threat; Myrnin knew that she was a dab hand with a stake and a vampire.

He took a deep breath and paused for a few seconds, trying to will himself into sounding his usual self whilst telling the biggest lie he had in years. "Of course she is fine; she merely misses you all greatly, and given she has half an hour spare now, she requested you visit. The visit _cannot_ be more than twenty minutes long, however."

He wondered if she would fall for it. He wondered if he would see through the shoddy attempt to act like himself when, in reality, his entire world was crumbling around him.

She did.

"We'll be there in ten minutes—we want her for the full time she's free, Myrnin, no trying to get rid of us early," Eve replied, hanging up the phone, but not before Myrnin heard her yelling for Shane and Michael.

As he, too, hung up the phone, he wondered what he had become, finding himself destroyed by his murder of a human—this was only the latest in a long, long line of deaths, after all, and that was all it should be. But Claire was different, and Myrnin knew that that one minute of no control had led to him losing someone he could have potentially had for the rest of eternity; no wonder he was lost.

"Claire?" he said hesitantly, knocking on the bedroom door rather than entering it. He had no right to do that, after all.

"What is it?" she asked with a voice thick with tears, an almost bitterness in her words.

"I invited your friends over for a short visit," he replied, pressing his hand against the door as he spoke. He wanted to enter, he did, but he had to give her space for herself in her final hours. "I thought…I thought you would want to say goodbye."

There was a silence then, a silence that stretched so long that Myrnin was about to break it before he heard Claire mumble, "thank you."

He smiled a smile filled with anger and despair, bitterness and hatred, and said, "oh, don't thank me, Claire. I don't think that you're going to enjoy this at all."

And with that, Myrnin walked away, ready to depart the laboratory as soon as Claire's friends arrived. He didn't think that he could handle being around them.

_~x~_

The moment Claire heard that her friends – her _boyfriend _– would be arriving, it seemed as though she had finally gotten something good out of the day: thus far, she'd been almost killed and trapped within Myrnin's vicinity, went shopping and turned crazy, then discovered she was going to die that night. Getting the chance to see her friends seemed a good thing – it meant she could be reminded that she had people who loved her – she suddenly understood why Myrnin meant it was more of a curse in disguise: she was dying. She wouldn't be able to tell them that – Shane would surely attack Myrnin if he knew – and so she didn't know exactly what she could say.

There was also the possibility that she would lapse into one of what she had previously termed Myrnin's 'crazy times' – and if she did, she had to hide it until they left. Whilst it was his fault, Claire didn't want Myrnin dead because of what he had done – she didn't hate him that much, and certainly didn't want them both to die. If she was going, he was staying alive.

"CB!" Eve's voice startled her, and Claire looked around to realise that the door to the bedroom was open, and her three friends were standing in the doorway.

She couldn't fight back a smile as she ran across the room to greet the three of them, hugging Eve, then Michael and then finally, Shane. Claire wanted nothing more than to look at the three of them, to memorise their faces and their good points so that when midnight came, she would have faces to visualise when her time came.

"I missed you all!" she squealed, hugging them all in turn as her fears vanished. Physical contact seemed to have eradicated the fact that she was never going to see them again from her mind, and made her forget that there was a very, _very_ real chance that she could lose control with them – she had twenty or so minutes with them to be normal, and that was all she wanted.

"Are you alright?" Shane asked, his arms keeping her close to him and refusing to let her go. "He hasn't…_hurt_ you, has he?"

She hesitated a moment – just a fraction, too little for them to notice – before shaking her head, somehow ensuring that the area where Myrnin bit her was hidden; she didn't know whether or not the vampire blood had healed them over or not.

"No…I just have to stay for a while," Claire said, choosing her words carefully. "How're you all, though?" she tried to change the conversation from herself, to avoid having to tell lies to some of the only people in the world that she cared about.

"I'm good; Oliver _finally_ gave me a payrise!" Eve said, a smile on her lips. "True, he did make me agree to work an extra ten hours a week for it, but that's not the point—I beat Oliver!"

"I slept today," Michael told Claire, sounding proud of himself.

"Yes, because nobody does that normally, do they?" Shane evidently couldn't help himself and had to respond to Michael's snippet of information, and Claire couldn't help but laugh; it was true, after all.

It was this moment that Claire realised she would never forget; it was the four of them, together like always, and they were just being themselves. There was banter between Michael and Shane, Eve was wearing her ridiculous make-up and Shane…Shane was protective as always, and exactly the sort of friend Claire needed. Whether or not she would have married him if she would survive past midnight, she didn't know, but what she _did_ know was that he would always have been part of her life.

And so Claire enjoyed the following nineteen minutes; they contained the final time she would ever see her Glass House gang. And that made them more precious than almost anything.

_~x~_

Myrnin couldn't stay in the lab when Claire's friends were there, that much he knew…but he didn't know if he could leave the location Claire was in. She couldn't be further than a certain distance from him earlier, so perhaps that still held—he had to try, though.

He moved across to the wooden door in the corner of the room, the one that Claire told him sporadically to replace, but he never did, and imagined Amelie's office before him. The frequency was one his brain didn't even need to think about, he used it so much, and within fractions of a second, he had the door open to reveal his location.

Tentatively, he put one foot through the door. Nothing happened. He took a step forwards, and there was no barrier to block him leaving the lab; perhaps the strength of his connection with Claire was wavering the more she became affected by the disease, he considered, before he focused on the room he was in.

Amelie sat behind her desk, her eyes trained on Myrnin's face, her expression not amused as she stared at him. "I am pleased you have finally recognised that you are in my office, not one of your hovels," she said harshly, picking up a pen as she spoke. "Why are you here, Myrnin?"

"I…I am here to beg you to not let Oliver kill Claire," he said, his voice ragged as he stood before Amelie. His legs felt weak, he felt almost unable to control himself, and he knew that it wouldn't be long before his knees gave way.

His longest friend—though perhaps not for long, given what she was making him do—stared at him again, though this time, her expression had just a hint of kindness about it. "Myrnin, I thought we had agreed that she has to die," she said softly, her tone rather pleasant for what she was discussing. "She is a danger to herself and the town…this death is a kindness more than anything else."

Myrnin shook his head rapidly, feeling his hair fly all over the place; he didn't mean to get so animated, but he couldn't help himself. It was the only way he could react. "No," he said, barely able to choke the word out; there was suddenly a lump in his throat. "I don't want you to rescind the death order. I…I want to kill her myself."

It felt strange for him to be saying that; he had never imagined when he woke up the morning before that today, he would be standing in Amelie's office, begging her to let him kill Claire, rather than Oliver. Then again, he thought wryly, he never thought that he would cause anyone to go crazy.

Amelie's expression softened further, and that was all it took for Myrnin's knees to go out from beneath him, causing him to suddenly drop half of his height. "Myrnin…I can't," she whispered, her eyes moving from his face to the desk before her. "You won't manage it. You love her too much to hurt her—irrevocably, at least."

He shook his head again, and placed a hand on Amelie's desk, closing his eyes as he did so. "I want to—I don't want the last hands to touch her to be Oliver's—or even yours. I did this. I want to take full responsibility for what I did to her, and that means I have to kill her. I don't want to do it, but I know I will do it far less painfully than Oliver."

"He has promised to give her the respect she deserves and do it without her realising," Amelie argued, but Myrnin knew she could tell it was a lost cause. There was nothing she could say that would stop him from killing Claire—a thought that sickened him.

"Please," was all he had to say to make her incline her head ever so slightly, opening her eyes to survey Myrnin's face.

"Oliver will be present to ensure that you do it," she said grudgingly, pressing her fingers together. "This entire matter is not something that pleases me, Myrnin, I hope you know that."

He smiled ever so slightly—a slightly manic, insane smile that he knew would scare Amelie—and somehow got to his feet, still feeling weak. "Oh yes, I know, Amelie," he said, moving back towards the portal. "I can assure you, it does _anything_ but please me."

With that, he slammed the portal shut, returning to his laboratory to try and distract himself until the visitors left.

**.**

"Don't hurt her—or you'll have me to answer to," was what Eve said as she walked past Myrnin on her way out. Claire was still in the bedroom, not able to face the goodbye being made so permanent.

Ahead of her, already halfway up the stairs, was Michael and Shane, and Myrnin knew that they were surveying him now.

He deliberately kept his facial expressions neutral as he picked up a bottle of some white powder, and poured it into another bottle. "I very much believe that you are telling the truth," he said, not answering the question directly.

The compound forming began to emit toxic fumes, and Myrnin only wished that they affected him; he would rather die than do what he had to do in only a few hours' time. "Now, if you want to survive, I would leave now," he said, thankful for the departure of the Glass House gang being made more absolute. "Goodbye, Evan, Shane and Michael. I hope you have a good afternoon."

Myrnin half hoped that they would.

* * *

I'll update if I get 15 reviews.

And I'll put the names in a random name generator and see who gets a oneshot next time.


	8. Morscausando

_Chapter 8:_

I'm sorry the updates aren't quite so quick as I used to update; I've just started year 13, and as well as my courses, I'm also doing volunteering in the history department in my frees, and have to prepare for my applications to uni. So I'll definitely update this coming fortnight, but it may be at the end of it.

* * *

Unlike the first time that the disease attacked her, Claire knew that the second one was coming before it hit.

It was mere minutes after her friends had left the lab—she had been standing by the bedroom door, peering out of the keyhole, tears streaming down her face as she saw her friends disappear for the last time—and it scared her. She could feel the change in her, the way that everything seemed to just _look_ different, how she was trying to see the bad in everything: the shadows seemed darker, the light seemed more guarded, as though there was something limiting its levels, and the moment that she began to hear screaming in her mind, she yelled.

"HELP ME, MYRNIN!" she shouted as loudly as she could manage, running towards the door as she spoke.

Claire wrenched it open and before she could take more than one step into the laboratory, there was Myrnin, pulling her into his arms, stroking her hair and whispering, "Claire, you're going to be fine: just take deep, calming breaths and you'll be fine."

She didn't believe him, though, and it was merely seconds before she felt the pain ripping through her, coursing through her body, making her feel as though she was about to explode. "Ah, it hurts," she moaned through gritted teeth, trying with all her might to retain the control of her motor functions, so that the disease didn't get the best of her. Claire didn't want to insult Myrnin, didn't want to let the truths and hurt that she felt deep down come out, because that wouldn't exactly help the situation.

"Claire, you can fight this," Myrnin said, and Claire, even in this state, could hear the hesitation in his tone. He was trying to make her believe that he had absolute confidence in her, but he didn't. She was aware that there was no victory with this disease, only controlling it for the final hours of her life, and that she was fighting a losing battle, one that she would never, ever win.

"I can't," she whispered, feeling the creeping fingers of the thing in her brain spreading through the rest of her brain tissue, no matter how hard she fought. It was as though sleep was coming at the same time as stabbing pains dug in all over her body, causing her to double over, and before she had chance to right herself, she felt herself fading into the darkness.

At least in the dark, she thought, she had relative peace.

* * *

_~x~_

Myrnin could tell instantly that the disease had control of her, but rather than try and get her locked down before she could hurt herself or him, he grew focused on the fact that she was in pain—and she was for most of the time it took for the disease to overpower her.

He wanted a name for this disease, this _thing_ that was taking his Claire from him, because lumping it in with all the other diseases of the world—that was wrong; this was something one thousand times more barbaric and ruthless than things like Alzheimer's (even the vampire version) because this was taking a young girl and turning her into a monster, reducing her goodness into cinders, before she would be taken from the world of the living, even though everyone was trying their damndest to keep her here. This disease ought to be named something disgusting, vile, revolting name that matched its nature, but Myrnin had truly no idea what that should be; what was adequate for such a heinous thing?

Before he could consider this, however, Myrnin realised that the girl in his arms was suddenly shaking, and he instinctively knew that within seconds, she would be fighting him to get free.

"You're a bastard, you know," she hissed at him, her head lifting suddenly for her eyes to meet his—but they weren't her eyes. They were the soft brown eyes that he had grown to know (and possibly even love) but they were hard and two-dimensional, not one iota of feeling within them: they were the eyes of a monster.

They were his eyes.

"I know," was all he could say, because there was no denying it; that was what he was, a bastard. "I know, Claire, and you don't need to tell me. You need to sit down and have a drink, and then _fight_ this thing inside you."

"Nothing is inside of me," she snarled, trying to pull her wrists from the tight grip Myrnin had them in—funny, he thought. He didn't recall grasping them. "The only thing inside me is _you_; this is you that's destroying me. You're just a sad, weird man who doesn't know how to love anything, and that's why you were unable to resist my blood—you're selfish. You're a selfish, evil bastard who doesn't know right from wrong, and you're not loyal to _anyone—_"

Before she could say any more, Myrnin's hand had released one of hers and had slapped her across the cheek, this being the only way that he could think to make her _shut up_! He didn't want her to say these things, at least not when she was like this, but the guilt at what he had done was immediate: he didn't want to hurt her. He had never wanted to hurt her; this was an accident.

"Claire, I'm so sorry," he said immediately, raising his hand to touch her face, running his fingers over the red mark that was forming. He hoped that the coolness of his skin would help, but before his fingers had been there for more than three or four seconds, Claire was screaming.

"HELP, HELP, HE'S ATTACKING ME!" she screeched, so loud that Myrnin feared that the Day woman next door would hear her. With the one hand that she had free, Claire began to reach out for Myrnin, scratching at his skin, though the marks she left healed near instantly.

Myrnin couldn't stop Claire as she began to fight him, kicking and screaming for him to let go of her wrist and to let her _go_, but he didn't let go. She wouldn't be able to make him let go, not unless she staked him, and that wasn't going to happen. He was frozen to the spot, as he was in the car for a few moments, unable to combine his beautiful, sweet Claire and the monster that was before him, insulting him and attacking him as though he was an enemy, not a friend of almost two years.

She wasn't his Claire when she was like this.

As he resisted her attempts to bite him to make him let go, Myrnin realised that this was what it had been like for her; he had had enough self-control to resist hurting her—most of the time—but barely. He always knew that she was close to death when she was near him in those moods (and if he happened to fall into one now, she still would be) because he could never be certain if he was going to have the control to avoid killing her.

She didn't have the ability to kill him, but that wasn't the point; the point was that she _would_, if she could, and that meant there was no going back. The disease had her entirely—he decided he would call it Morscausando _(death causing)_ because that was about all he could sum it up as—and not until its control was relinquished by Claire's fight to come back and control her body would she cease in her attempts.

"Claire, please," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Don't do this, fight it, Claire, fight it if not for me, then for yourself—you don't want to try and do this," he continued, grasping both of her wrists in one of his hands, reaching out to touch her face with his other.

Claire kept trying to move away from him, but she could only get so far away with him having such a tight grip on her, and the way he held his hand meant that she couldn't bite him; all she could do was try and twist her head away so that his hand wouldn't make contact with his skin.

"I hate you!" she hissed, and these three words, though he had already heard them, were what almost broke Myrnin.

"I know," he repeated, his voice flat and without emotion; if he gave into emotion, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from destroying her right now, just to remove the pain from his life

"Then let me _go_!" she snarled, sounding more like a vampire than Myrnin had ever heard her sound before. "Let me go and I can be happy away from you; you're the one who caused this—if I don't see you, I can be normal."

And just like that, she was sobbing, no longer trying to break away from Myrnin; instead, she leaned into him as the sobs wracked her body. Myrnin knew that she wasn't using him as a support because she wanted to; he was the only one who could comfort her, as the disease's control slowly removed itself from her, and therefore he would be the one to comfort her.

And that he would, damning the pain it caused his soul.

"You're going to be just fine, Claire," he said quietly as he let go of her wrists and pulled her into his chest, just as he had done before. She wasn't as violent as she had been in the car, something for which he was thankful. "Just let it all out, cry as much as you want—hate me, scream at me, curse me, I don't care. I deserve it."

Myrnin felt the tears dripping down his own cheeks as Claire wailed into his chest, and he did his best to try and stem them—this was Claire's time to mourn her own life, not his. He would have plenty of time to do that in the future. So he took her over to the lumpy sofa in the corner of the laboratory, one that he had seldom used, and he pulled her into his lap, nothing romantic about the position: it was merely the best way for him to hold her as she wept.

There were many attempts by Claire to stammer something about as she cried, but each one was unintelligible, even to Myrnin's superior hearing, and so he pretended that he heard nothing. Instead, he stared into the distance, trying his best not to think, and every now and then murmured something to Claire in an attempt to calm her down, something that was working—no matter how slowly.

Morscausando, the disease, it was more complex than Myrnin had thought—at least, it was in humans. He had thought that he knew that it was focused on violence and hurting those who were close to you when you were under its control; but here was Claire, evidently not herself, crying about her impending doom: evidently, it affected the person suffering, making them aware of their fate and making them suffer through it. He had no idea what was occurring in Claire's mind, and he had a feeling that he didn't want to know.

The disease didn't only destroy those around you, like he had previously thought: it destroyed the person suffering as well, even more than they already did, and it was doing that to Claire, no doubt about it. If Myrnin wanted to, he could have written this down, attempting to find himself a better drug for his own case…but he didn't. There was nothing that he wanted more than to calm Claire down, for her to return to herself and for her to enjoy (if that was possible) her last hours on the place they called Earth.

He wanted to hurt himself and hold her close to him, rocking her back and forth to soothe her, because he knew that to destroy himself was the only chance that she would have of being herself when he killed her.

(He didn't want her to die as someone she wasn't.)

**.**

Somehow, they had fallen asleep.

Myrnin jolted to, realising that the girl in his arms was, finally, motionless, the tracks of her tears staining the skin of her cheeks, and for a moment he imagined that this was just a normal day. He imagined that she was fine and he was healthy, and that they had a chance to be partners _forever_; this wasn't in the noughties, as people called this decade, but it was in 3004, and they had just completed one of their biggest achievements.

He allowed himself this fantasy for another few moments, imagining that Claire would wake up and they would go and tell Amelie that they were right, that whatever it was worked and that she needed to give them permission to use the machine, before he realised that this was Claire's last day.

There would be no work together in the year three thousand and four; she was stuck here, in the year of our Lord two thousand and nine, and she was never going to move beyond it. This was the end of her path.

Myrnin shifted to look at the clock in the far corner of the laboratory, and his already cold body felt as though it had become nothing more than ice: it was six oh three in the evening.

Half an hour until sunset, according to his calculations.

Half an hour until Oliver arrived to watch him deliver the fatal blow.

* * *

10 reviews and the names'll go in a generator, the winner getting a oneshot.

And I'll also write one for the first reviewer, so.

Please don't favourite or alert without reviewing. Or I'll PM you. That's always fun.


	9. Pizza

_Chapter 9:_

Prepare for the feels. Seriously.

Oh, and MyrninsBitch gets a oneshot for being the first reviewer on the prior chapter.

* * *

_Claire's POV:_

The stiffening of whatever she was resting on made Claire realise that she was asleep, that she was wasting her final hours alive, and so she felt herself return to consciousness relatively slowly. Only when she was almost ready to open her eyes, did she realise that she was in fact resting on Myrnin, who had evidently also fallen asleep; there was no other explanation for why he would allow her to rest on top of him. Even with her…predicament, she wouldn't be allowed to.

"Hello, Claire," he whispered in her ear quietly, evidently aware that she was awake. "Would you like any refreshment?"

She shook her head slowly, and at an equal speed, opened her eyes; it was growing dark in the laboratory, and so the light wasn't painful on her sleep-filled eyes. She was more tired than she ought to be, given how much sleep she had gotten last night, but she couldn't waste the rest of her life asleep. Whilst it would make the…end less painful, it would mean that she didn't have the opportunity to do some of the things she loved the most before she did leave the world of the living, and move into whatever came next. That thought scared her, and so Claire decided to forget about the fact that _something_ was going to happen to her; she didn't know what, but she had a distinct feeling that she wouldn't be floating in space for the rest of eternity.

At least, she hoped she wouldn't be.

"I…what time is it?" she asked quietly, struggling to sit upright. Myrnin aided her, using his strength to pull her from him and onto the sofa to his left, their bodies no longer touching. She was pleased with this—it afforded her the clarity she needed to think things through.

Her body felt different to before; it seemed heavier than before, and even something as rudimentary as breathing seemed to take more effort than it usually did. Whether this was a psychological effect or was actually happening, Claire didn't know, but she wasn't going to mention it to Myrnin. She wanted to spend her final time on this planet having fun—or as close to fun as she could manage, provided that she didn't lapse into the world of the twisted and unknown again—rather than being prodded and poked as Myrnin tried to find her a painkiller she didn't need.

There was pain, too, now that she thought about it; she didn't just ache, she _pained_, all over—each limb seemed to hang there, and it felt as though she should be hanging off the side of a building, should have just completed an absail down the side of the Eiffel Tower, or basically anything that would require the energy it felt she had lost. Her body felt spent, and given the fact she had just slept for however long…it made Claire certain that her body was shutting down.

Perhaps this involuntary euthanasia she was getting was the best thing after all; perhaps within days, she would be immobile, locked into her body like the vampires she had found in the prison had been like even though their diseases were different, and she would starve to death, all the while aware of what was going on. She didn't want to be locked in her head; she wanted out before that happened. So perhaps amidst the darkness of what was happening, there was a humane side to it, also.

"It's after six," Myrnin said slowly, shifting as he spoke. One minute he was sitting next to her, the next he was on the other side of the room, digging around in the fridge. "I have a pizza for you, if you desire nourishment. It's supposed to be the best, though I'm not quite sure…there is _supposed_ to be red stuff amidst the yellow strands, yes?"

Claire couldn't help but laugh; it was so Myrnin to make her feel normal through his blatant lack of understanding of the modern culture (though pizza's existence through multiple centuries meant he ought to have seen it before) and she wondered whether or not he was actively trying to find ways to distract her from what was happening. She ought to be wanting to kill him the entire time she remained conscious and sane, but she didn't; all she wanted to know was that when she died, he was going to carry on his existence as though she had never been more than a blip on his radar.

It was strange that she wanted him to forget her, to act as though she had never existed, but she was doing this for Myrnin's benefit; she didn't want him to hurt more than he had to. She didn't want to leave the world without having made her mark on it, but something told her that if any trace of her was left, Myrnin would also be no more.

"Why are you…oh, never mind," Myrnin inquired, and Claire could tell that he was befuddled by the fact that she was laughing. Her execution was so close, and yet she was joyful and exuberant—though with the way that his gaze flitted over her, resting on her eyes, she could tell that he was checking for signs of madness, for signs of the disease.

Too late, Claire realised that this was how Myrnin got when he was about to go over the edge, and she soon found herself begging herself to be able to retain her sanity for the rest of her time; she didn't have much time left at all, and to spend even a minute of that out of control wasn't what she wanted.

"I'm fine," she confirmed with him, taking a deep, calming breath in order to steady her heart rate, and to get the flush in her cheeks to die down. "And yes, it's meant to have bits of cheese on top of some tomato—wait, not like _that_! Myrnin, it's mouldy! Just how long have you had this in here for?"

Myrnin looked sheepish as their eyes met once more, and as he handed the pizza over to Claire, she noted how it was so soft that it indented where his fingers had been pressed. "Well, it may have been bought in the preparations for the New Year festivities…"

Claire quickly thought about the date in her head. "Myrnin…it's almost September; you mean to say that you've had this pizza for almost nine months?"

He nodded slowly, and Claire had to laugh again. "Well, it doesn't matter, does it?" she said slowly. "We can just order one in, can't we? It won't take, like, six hours for them to deliver it, will it?" she snorted slightly, before she realised that she didn't have six hours. "Then again, with the fact that they'd be trying to find this place, it could take them about six years—and the pizza'd be in a worse state than this one!" she continued, motioning to the one in her hands, having continued speaking in order to forget about what she had thought about: how little time she was going to be around.

Myrnin nodded once more and reached into his pocket for the phone he was ordered to have, before handing it to Claire. She took it and dialled her favourite pizza place in Morganville, requesting them to go to the Day House; Myrnin was able to get it from there, she was sure.

"See you in ten!" she said as cheerfully as she could manage as she sent him out straight away after calling, on the pretext that she wanted to set some plates and then make herself look presentable. Before he went, though, Claire found herself needing to call something out after him, "I love you!" she didn't know if she meant as a friend, or as a lover, but she knew that she did, indeed, love Myrnin. She had no desire to analyse their roots.

As soon as the laboratory was empty, Claire moved back to the sofa, curling herself up into the foetal position, and rocked herself slowly, unable to stop the tears streaming down her cheeks.

_She had less than six hours to live_.

* * *

_Myrnin's POV:_

He knew that she was sending him out for a reason, and even though he tried his best not to invade her privacy, Myrnin couldn't help but hear the sobs that wracked Claire's body as she waited for a death that was actually less than twenty minutes away.

It seemed alien to him that only a minute before, they—well, Claire—had been laughing over pizza and his idiocy at keeping one that was so out of date, because the last ten minutes or so had been a complete daze to Myrnin. He hadn't really paid attention to any of it, yet he knew that if he asked himself to recall any detail about it, about Claire, then he would be able to tell himself. It was just a method to avoid the pain, he felt, by pushing the events as far out of the realms of normalcy as possible; perhaps if he did that, he felt, he would be able to pretend that killing Claire was merely a dream, too. And she had told him she loved him…that was best kept under a veil too, until he had had chance to process the evening's events. And that, he felt, could take more than a millennia.

Once at the end of the road, Myrnin tried to dial the number to cancel the pizza, but had no idea how to do it. The number had disappeared…and now the phone was flashing. Oliver's name was coming up, and the shrill noise the machine was making gave Myrnin the impression that his most-hated vampire acquaintance was attempting to make contact with him.

Stabbing at buttons, Myrnin lifted the phone to his ear in hope that it would have put the dog on the line. "What do you want?" he asked suspiciously, at the same time as Oliver said, "I see you're able to operate the technology Amelie provided you then, fool."

Evidently, Myrnin's stabbing of buttons had worked. But whilst he would normally draw upon this success as fuel for attacking Oliver, he had no energy to do that. As he heard Claire cry, he knew that he was just as fragile as her, and as soon as her heart stopped, his may as well have never existed.

"What do you want?" Myrnin repeated as the silence grew between himself and Oliver. There were sounds of movement, as though Oliver was using his vampire speed to speed along to his intended location, but before any further noise came from the phone, he looked up to see Oliver standing there.

Deliberately flipping the phone shut, Oliver stood opposite Myrnin, clad in black leather, and it was with great effort that he resisted saying anything. The not unkind expression on his face aided Myrnin's resolve, also.

"She knows?" Oliver asked, and Myrnin hesitated before shaking his head. "Fool! I thought it was decided that you would tell her when she would die."

"I…I wanted to make her think that she had a bit longer," he whispered, suddenly seeing the evil side to this: she thought she had longer to say goodbye to the things she loved, and so when he returned in there to snap her neck, she wouldn't have finished. "I didn't want her to be scared when the sun set…I wanted her to die without knowing she was going to die."

To Myrnin's surprise, Oliver reached out a slapped one hand down on his shoulder, a show of solidarity, before he removed it—it did linger for a few seconds, however. "I understand; you didn't want her feeling as though she was going to her execution, as so many thousands, probably millions, have before her," he summarised, slowly walking with Myrnin back towards the alleyway. "It was noble—something I cannot believe I am saying to you—and whilst it may not have been right…we do not need to tell Amelie. As far as she needs to know, Claire died a peaceful death, knowing she was going to die."

Myrnin was dumstruck. "I…thank you," he muttered, the civility here just as strange as the situation they were in. "Though this changes nothing."

"I never expected it to," Oliver confirmed, stopping just outside the wooden shack. His voice lowered to a level so that Claire wouldn't hear it, adding, "I'll wait here. I can see…everything I need to see."

Slowly, Myrnin nodded, his mouth dry, even though he had no need for saliva; it was as though he was going to his execution, not Claire going to hers, because as he took each step down the stairs, one agonising step at a time, he felt as though he was getting closer and closer to the end of his own heart. His happiness and Claire's life were intertwined, and to remove one removed the other.

She seemed to sense someone's presence, and so Myrnin noticed how Claire shuffled herself to a sitting position, hearing her wipe her eyes as she did so. "Myrnin, is that you?" she called out, confused. "The pizza can't be here yet, is it?"

Myrnin froze where he was, just out of Claire's line of sight, turning his head slightly towards where he had just come from; Oliver stood there, at the crest of the stairs, his face grim but foreboding. Claire was dying, if Oliver had to do it himself.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, Claire settled back down on the sofa, her back to where Myrnin stood, and as he realised it was time for him to make his move, Myrnin realised that there was wetness on his face: tears. He had shed dozens of tears, his vision slightly impaired, yet he had no issue with locating Claire's exact position, ready to spring in three…two…one…

And then she was turning around, facing him, as though she knew he had been standing there all along.

"What?" she whispered, tears streaming down her own face, and Myrnin stopped half a metre away from her, his expression a mixture of shame and agony. "Are…are you doing it now?" she continued, her voice cracking on the final word.

Myrnin couldn't speak, so he merely strode forwards, taking both of Claire's wrists in one of his hands, and nodded, his curls flying everywhere. "I'm sorry," he managed to get out, and he was surprised and pleased simultaneously that Claire launched herself into his arms.

Her mouth was at his ear and she pressed her lips to it softly, the heat of her breath making him realise just how cold he was. "Make it quick." Claire's voice was barely audible above her sobs and tears, "please. I want this over."

Myrnin grasped the girl tighter in his arms, on the pretext of hugging her, and as her hair tickled his skin, he muttered equally quietly, "I love you, please forgive me."

Before she could say another word, he had twisted her head with one move, the audible crunch of bones in her neck indicating that it was broken, the sudden stop of her heart beat telling Myrnin that she was dead: instantaneous death, just as Amelie had wanted. Just as they all had wanted.

It didn't make him feel any better.

Somehow, Myrnin heard the advancement of Oliver down the stairs as he fell to the floor, Claire's motionless body clenched tightly in his arms. "I'm sorry!" he cried out, burying his face in Claire's back. "I'm so, so, so sorry! Forgive me, Claire, please forgive me."

He was ravaging a war in his mind, a struggle to keep himself out of the darkness that Claire's death—Claire's murder—threatened to pull him into, a sanctuary from this soul destroying woe, and the fight to stay here, with Claire, to punish himself…and to be with her. This was the last time he would touch her, the last time he would hold her in his arms, feel the warmth from her skin seeping into his; he would never see her again. His heart couldn't stand to lay eyes on her once more.

"I'm sorry, Claire," he wailed once more, noting how Oliver stayed well away, and made no comments. "Forgive me."

And that's all he could say for another five hours.

* * *

Please don't favourite or alert without reviewing. There's another chapter to come, so if I get 10 reviews, I'll write the first one & the tenth a oneshot. Ok?

I'll update as soon as I've got my uni application in, and since I'm applying to Oxford, that has to be in within two weeks, so yes, two week update MAX.


	10. Finale

_Chapter 10:_

Whoops, I forgot to update the day I applied; I applied yesterday. But I got my first offer today [and considering people who sent it a week before me haven't got any offers yet, I'm in shock] so here's the final chapter!

Oneshots will be written for **Myrnins Bitch **&** NarutoRox** if they would like to leave their requests at the end of the chapter.

* * *

"You need to give her to Gérard," Amelie said to Myrnin softly, sitting down on one of the chairs next to him. The dawn had broken and they were into a new day, yet Myrnin still continued to sit with Claire in his arms, not moving, his eyes staring into her face as though he was waiting for forgiveness that she would never give him.

"No," he whispered, his voice barely audible. He didn't look at Amelie, didn't act as though she was even there, save for speaking to her. "I'm not letting her go with your guards—you'll do something to her."

Amelie reached forwards and placed one of her hands on Myrnin's shoulder, but Myrnin did nothing. He let her do what she wanted, because he knew that she would anyway. "I will have her taken to the funeral home, in preparation for her burial, Myrnin, nothing more," she said, and though he knew he ought to believe her, Myrnin couldn't. Whilst he knew in his mind that she had no reason to hurt Claire, especially now that she was dead, the paranoia rose up and left him unable to let Claire leave his side.

Not until he was ready would she be leaving him.

He felt the pressure of Amelie's hand leave his shoulder, and that almost jolted him to look up, but he didn't; nothing would stop him looking at Claire, stop him apologising with his eyes, begging her to forgive him for what she had done. There was still the look of fear in her eyes, something that was because of him, and though it pained him more than anything to look at this, he couldn't look away; he was never going to see her again after this. That he was certain of—he wouldn't be attending her funeral, wouldn't be going to her grave, because that would only destroy him. _He_ did this; he destroyed Claire Danvers.

She wasn't his to grieve for, not really.

"I will take her from you by force in ten minutes, Myrnin," he heard Amelie saying as she stood up and moved away from him.

He said nothing to this, merely continued to stare at Claire, begging and begging her to forgive him, even though he knew that she couldn't hear him; that was his fault, and he had to accept that he was never going to get an answer about whether or not she could forgive him.

_~x~_

He heard the portal open almost ten minutes later, and knew that Amelie was here to make good on the promise to take Claire by force. Myrnin was aware that he wasn't going to put Claire through the continued fight in death; he would let her go peacefully, just as she had always tried to live her life—she just ended up being dragged into the many occurrences of trouble in Morganville.

Standing up slowly, Myrnin realised suddenly just how cold Claire's body was; room temperature in his laboratory was below that of the outside surroundings, and he had no body heat to pass onto her. It just made it even more evident that the girl in his arms wasn't sleeping: she was dead, deceased, never to open her eyes or breathe again. She was never going to say his name again, never going to tell him to tidy his laboratory again—she was never going to do anything for herself again.

At an equal, measured pace, Myrnin moved across the laboratory to where Amelie and her guard stood, and he finally looked away from Claire's face, it having imprinted in his mind for eternity—or however long he managed to live after this. "Here you go. Be careful with her. Please," he said to Amelie, sliding the girl from his arms into Gérard's and turning immediately away.

"Don't do anything that you told me not to do when Samuel died," Amelie told Myrnin from across the room. "If I return here to find that you are quite insane, I shall have to take action, Myrnin. Please, my friend, do not destroy yourself—she…she would not have wanted that."

Amelie spoke the truth; Myrnin knew that. He had said nearly the exact same thing to her months before, when she faced the same predicament as himself, and it was only now that he understood how empty the words were; he had meant well by them, but they did nothing…they did nothing to alleviate the pain that rushed through him every second because of what he had done. He knew that Claire wanted him to live his life and to carry on with science in her name, but putting that into practise was harder than he had thought possible for it to be.

"Very well," he agreed slowly, realising that she would not leave until he promised not to commit suicide, essentially. "I shall not do anything that Claire would not want me to do. You have my word." It wasn't exactly what Amelie wanted—especially since Claire had such a different view on the world than Amelie—but evidently it was a good enough answer for she bowed her head and disappeared from the room, taking Claire with her.

The minute that the girl's body left the lab, Myrnin dropped to his knees again and began to weep, great uncontrollable sobs that had him unable to move save for the vibrations of his agony. There was nothing that he could do but kneel there, his body not feeling his own to operate, as he was tortured by his image of Claire in his mind—too late, he realised that he had never managed to get a photograph of her. All he had of her was his memories…memories which would be tainted by the disease, manipulated and teased into different formations whenever the insanity which had killed her took control.

Without realising it, Myrnin was on his feet, wiping his eyes as he strode towards the portal, determined to go and find a photograph of Claire. He knew exactly where there would be dozens…he just didn't know if he had the audacity or the courage to enter the Glass House and tell the residents that their fellow was dead—he knew he definitely would not be mentioning that he was the reason she was dead.

The portal was open before he could consider aborting the mission, and as he entered the Glass House, he was stricken by how normal life was; he could hear the girl and the one of the boys yelling at one another in the kitchen, the other on his way down the stairs. Myrnin was amazed at how they hadn't even realised something was wrong with Claire, hadn't even had a feeling that she was gone.

"What are you doing here?" the tone was accusatory and Myrnin knew instantly that it was the Collins boy. "Wait, why do you look like that? Is Claire ok?"

The boy's voice was louder now, and the other two residents had exited the kitchen, coming to stand behind Shane as they faced Myrnin. He couldn't look any of them in the eye, for fear that they would see right through him—not only as to the reason for Claire's death, but that he loved her, loved her in ways that they wouldn't be able to understand.

"I…I must regretfully inform you that she is…she is…she…dead." Myrnin muttered, his eyes roaming the room for a photograph of Claire that he could steal.

As his eyes landed on one merely metres to his right, the gasps of the Glass House residents shocked Myrnin into looking at them. Shane was almost on the floor, evidently believing Myrnin straight away, the girl was standing there, her face pale without the makeup, and the vampire boy…well, he looked as though he wanted to kill Myrnin. Which, Myrnin thought, was really rather something that he would like; he just couldn't die, due to wanting to have Claire live on forever with him.

Moving swiftly, Myrnin picked up the photo frame and stuffed it into his pocket, ignoring the questions that the children began to yell at him. "I…Amelie shall explain all. I have nothing to say to you, besides that I am truly sorry for your loss; it has hit us all, and I do not know what I shall do without Claire."

As he turned to face the portal, the girl—Eve?—snapped, "No, you _don't_ understand! Claire's replaceable to you; you'll have another apprentice like her within a week. But to us, she was someone special, someone we can _never_ replace! You're a vampire, you don't understand—" she cut off as Myrnin turned to flash her a look that was mixed of both anger and complete and utter devastation.

"Claire was more than an apprentice to me; did you not notice that she has survived, when so many others have not?" Myrnin said, his voice ringing clear as he spoke. "She was the greatest scientist I have ever had the pleasure—or, rather, pain—of meeting, and all my work shall be carried on in her name. She will be the last apprentice to work with me, you can be assured of that; she will never be forgotten in the course of time…or, at least until Amelie or myself perish." He smiled ever so briefly at the end, it being torn and filled with anguish, before he walked back towards the portal. He was broken, so broken that he was almost human once more, and the children seemed to realise that.

He was shocked that they hadn't set upon him for killing Claire (for that would be the only way that she could die in his laboratory, after all) but perhaps they themselves were too stunned by the news to be attempting to avenge her death. So Myrnin walked back through the portal and into his home, locking it behind him so that he could not be disturbed as he wrapped his arms tightly around the photo and wept.

Things were never going to be the same again.

_~x~_

He knew that her funeral was held three days after her death, yet he refused to attend. The official cause of her death was that she had tripped and fell whilst working with him, something that the Glass House residents seemed to accept…but he didn't know how they really felt. Myrnin knew that if he stepped out in public with them around, at Claire's funeral, he would most likely get a stake to the heart for the trouble.

And anyway, he had already told himself that he would never see Claire again. He had eternal life; it was his punishment to never be able to see her again; that was why, after he had memorised the photograph, he locked it away in one of the cupboards, able to be accessed if required, but only in the direst of situations. She was to be as unattainable to him in photo form, as she was to be in a physical form.

"You missed the funeral." To his right, Myrnin noticed that Amelie was standing there, and though he attempted to ignore her for a few more moments, he became aware that she wouldn't let him do that. She had permitted it before, but not now…now, things were to go back to a semblance of normal.

"I chose not to go," he replied, keeping his voice neutral as he began to pile chemicals into a pot. "She didn't need me there; she needed me here. I will be here every day until we leave Morganville, leaving only when her friends have died. This shall be my prison, my punishment for what I have done to her."

Amelie took a step closer to Myrnin and placed a hand on his shoulder, as she had done that fateful morning. "We can end Morganville, Myrnin, there is no need for it any longer. We have achieved what we came to achieve, and the only thing that keeps us here now are the memories of those we loved here. Why do we not take their memories with us—the happy ones, the ones that make us certain that we loved them—and live life for them in somewhere that means something to _us_?" she sounded so hopeful, Myrnin half-thought that she expected him to agree with her.

"I cannot," he told her. "At least, not until she would have died if she had lived her whole life—I shall say that in sixty five years, if Morganville survives that long and you still want to leave, we shall leave and take our memories with us—they shall be nought but dust and shadows by then, after all…well, Claire will. But I cannot leave until then, Amelie. You must understand why I cannot."

He looked up at this point to see a wistful smile upon Amelie's lips, one that he had not seen for such a long time. "I know," she replied. "I knew what you would say, I merely wanted to confirm it. Yes, if we survive that long, we shall leave together, Myrnin, with our thoughts and memories…but for now, we shall remain here, together."

Before Myrnin could say another word, Amelie was gone, flitting from his side to the portal, which was situated on the other side of the room. Myrnin smiled slightly, not entirely sure why, and realised that he had sixty years to make enough of an impact on science that Claire would be revered worldwide for her contribution.

He had sixty years to make her greatness known to the world.

* * *

_Sixty years later:_

The weather was cold—comparatively to the Texan summer—and wet on the day that Morganville's residents were finally to be released. The years had provided them with new devices to fit within the bodies of the vampires, compelling them to be Amelie's for the rest of their existence, along with developments within the world of science that had made the headlines worldwide. Myrnin's name was never mentioned; the one that was always cited was Claire Danvers, and through this, Myrnin felt that he was helping Claire to live forever.

"Do you have your things, Myrnin?" Amelie asked as she stood by her car, waiting for him. "The driver must put them in the car now, for us to depart for…where was it that you said you wanted to go first?" her brow furrowed as she tried to recall Myrnin telling her a location, and Myrnin smiled.

"I never did tell you. I want to return to Wales, to stand upon the hills of my homeland and to appreciate what I have had for so many years: freedom." He waved away the man who approached him to take the one solitary bag he had with him; the rest of his equipment had been packed away last week, all of the things Claire had purchased alongside it. "If that is alright with you, of course."

Amelie smiled ever so slightly and inclined her head. "That is fine with me, Myrnin. Are you ready to say goodbye to the town which will be Claire's final resting place?" as she finished, her voice grew softer.

Myrnin nodded. "She is dead, and I understand that now. She has received the worldwide recognition that her scientific skills would have gotten her anyway, and whilst that does not mean that she will ever leave my heart, we must live our lives."

He didn't believe this; he only felt that it was appropriate to say to the woman who was leaving behind her lover, also. Inside, he knew that Claire's importance was never going to diminish within his heart, and neither were his feelings for her. She was always going to be the most brilliant scientist he ever knew—even more so than Ada—and he would never forget her.

As they drove from Morganville, Myrnin removed the photograph from his pocket and looked at the youthful face of the girl who meant everything to him; the one who was now merely dust, the one who he had killed just by his stupidity and illness. He was never going to make that mistake again.

"We will live for them, Myrnin," Amelie said quietly. "And they will never be forgotten."

Myrnin could only agree with this.

* * *

Please don't favourite without reviewing.

Feeling like promoting my other stories; I have many other ClaireMyrnins, and if you haven't seen my Clyrnin set in the Tudor era, you should read the first part.

Thanks for reading.


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